To engage your entire workforce, you must first engage your managers. How to do that? Ensure that you train and coach your up-and-coming leaders.

In a recent post, we discussed how important to job satisfaction it is for employees to see a path for personal and professional growth. In the post, we discussed a path that international bank UBS took to improve this in their organization. The first step in the UBS process was a focus on managers. In Human Resources Executive, Debbie Shotwell makes the case for why effective managers are your secret weapon – and in fact, a starting point in any path to employee engagement. She notes:

Gallup found that 51 percent of managers aren’t engaged themselves, and 14 percent are actively disengaged. A bad manager can have sweeping effects on performance, engagement and retention companywide. The impact? Gallup estimates that these disengaged managers cost the U.S. economy between $319 billion to $398 billion annually. And some 50 percent of employees have quit to escape a bad manager at some point in their career.

Shotwell says it doesn’t have to be this way: “Capable and engaged managers aren’t born, they’re trained – regardless of whether they’re an outside hire or internal candidate.” She discusses three ways organizations can develop and equip managers to play a key role in developing and sustaining an organizational culture of employee development and engagement.

  1. Focus on coaching for goal achievement
  2. Drive accountability with regular, ongoing check-ins
  3. Tap talent-management technology to leverage deep performance insights

The commonality or themes in all these efforts is training and development – for managers, yes, that is critical. But to many organizations stop there – it’s vital to extend self-development opportunities to the entire workforce: Train and coach your employees to build a high performing team. .

ESI EAP’s Peak Performance Benefits: A complete coaching, training and development program for your organization

The path outlined by UBS is a compelling one, but not all organizations have the resources to maintain an internal university for employee training. ESI’s Employee Assistance Program goes well beyond traditional EAP benefits to encompass Peak Performance Benefits, a personal and professional development program that includes  one-on-one personal & professional coaching programs, over 8,000 online training programs, more than 25,000 online self-help resources, and wellness coaching. Plus, we offer a broad range of training, development and compliance resources geared to supervisors and managers, including a Management Academy and specific tools for best practice recruiting, hiring, and onboarding.  Learn more about how ESI EAP’s Peak Performance Benefits could help your organization.

 

 

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