Line managers are pivotal to business success – support them to boost performance and drive impact with these tips from Steve Macaulay and David Buchanan
Why do line managers matter to L&D? Line managers create the environment – the resources and support that allow staff to perform their roles. But are we creating an enabling environment for line managers? Here is how L&D and HR can help.
Today’s line managers are your source of tomorrow’s top team
Your line managers are central to organisational performance. They link strategic goals with day-to-day operations. Their involvement in shaping strategy leads to better decisions, greater consensus, improved implementation, and better organisation performance. Today’s line managers are your source of tomorrow’s top team. Research shows that:
- Organisations rated highly on operations management, performance monitoring, target setting, and talent management, are more profitable, and grow faster.
- In healthcare, management capacity, and management practices concerning appraisal, training, and teamwork, contribute to the quality and outcomes of patient care.
- Line managers are a key determinant of staff satisfaction, by ensuring that staff have the resources and other support that they need.
With pressure from many directions, this is a challenging role. Just like their teams, line managers also need an enabling environment for their work. Here we explore how HR/L&D can strengthen that support and help line managers to lift their game.
What’s the job like?
Line managers juggle numerous responsibilities, often filling in on daily tasks when they should focus on maximising their team’s potential. They face the dual pressures of overseeing daily operations and aligning their team’s work with organisational goals, a constant source of stress.
- People and performance management: Effective performance management, feedback, and development are time-consuming yet crucial for team growth.
- Resource constraints: With limited budgets, equipment and staff, line managers are expected to do more with less.
- Change management: Driving and embedding new products, services, policies and technologies demands clear communication and the ability to manage resistance.
- Expectations management: Line managers are the primary contact for stakeholders, responsible for maintaining satisfaction and addressing issues promptly.
- Compliance and regulation: Ensuring adherence to organisational policies, legal regulations and industry standards requires constant vigilance.
What’s the problem?
Faced with these pressures, line managers can feel ill-equipped to tackle all that is required of them. No wonder they often report being overworked, unrecognised and taken for granted. To date, efforts to support them have often fallen short: do HR/L&D always understand the challenges faced by their line managers? Or do partial information, restricted budgets and limited feedback cloud their view?
Creating the right enabling environment is a major opportunity for significant improvement: HR/L&D can make a sizeable difference to the key line management role
What’s the solution?
HR/L&D must strengthen the enabling environment for line managers through these sizeable but important actions:
Emphasise the strategic importance of line management contributions. Empower line managers with decision rights to solve problems and drive improvement initiatives.
Autonomy and responsibility increase their influence, visibility, value – and motivation. Link pay and bonuses to targeted management performance and contributions.
Cut red tape and unnecessary requests from top management for information. This will give your line managers more time to focus on people management and change initiatives.
Establish forums, online and/or in-person, where managers can share insights, best practice, success stories and innovative ideas. The management role can be a lonely one, and structured approaches to information sharing are valuable.
Regularly assess the development needs of your line managers through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Use this information to tailor HR/L&D initiatives to address skill gaps that are directly applicable to their daily responsibilities. Involve line managers in the planning and design of training initiatives to foster a collaborative relationship. Prioritise initiatives that demonstrate the return on investment in line management capabilities.
Offer targeted leadership and management development, particularly in people management, decision-making, and change management, and provide other learning opportunities such as secondments, special projects and conference participation.
Establish and reinforce regular communication and feedback channels between HR and line managers. Use this information, along with performance measures, to assess and adjust the impact and effectiveness of support initiatives.
Promoting learning from each other
Laura Overton worked with the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development on L&D futures, including line management support. She advocates helping line managers and their teams to learn from each other through:
- Practical resources such as checklists and workflows.
- Coaching skills and peer discussions: Facilitate mutual learning and support.
- Support mechanisms: Implement forums and in-house social networks.
- Learning conversations: Embed as a component of organisational culture
- Skill development projects that encourage the development and application of new skills.
Implementing these strategies will transform HR/L&D from a source of frustration to a valued business partner – contributing to improved team and organisation performance.
Where can we find an example?
One UK organisation where HR/L&D and line management have been working together has shown the value of developing an enabling environment for their line managers. Nationwide Building Society implemented a programme to empower line managers as development coaches through:
Structured training: Providing line managers with a structured training programme in coaching skills, performance management, and giving feedback.
Ongoing support: Through coaching clinics and online resources, ensuring that line managers felt confident applying their new skills.
Recognition: Rewarding line managers who actively participated in the programme and demonstrated effective coaching behaviours.
Nationwide reported a significant increase in employee engagement and a more positive perception of line managers as development partners.
Enabling not disabling
Line managers face many challenges, but play a crucial, and often underappreciated role. By implementing the strategies outlined, HR/L&D can create an environment that empowers line managers, enhances their status, boosts their decision-making capabilities, helps their well-being, and ultimately elevates their performance and that of their teams.
Steve Macaulay is an associate at Cranfield Executive Development
David Buchanan is Emeritus Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cranfield School of Management
