Research recently carried out found that ‘front line managers played a pivotal role in terms of implementing and enacting HR policies and practices. Where employees feel positive about their relationship with their front line managers they are more likely to have higher levels of job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty which are associated with higher levels of performance or discretionary behaviour.’
It continued, ‘discretionary behaviour is defined as that which goes beyond the requirements of the job to give that extra performance which can boost the bottom line. Line managers also play the strongest part in structuring people’s actual experience of doing a job.’
The multi-disciplined front-line manager role is crucial across a broad range of day to day people management activities. Although the practices and processes may be designed by HR, they cannot be delivered by HR.
In many instances line managers are expected to be the channel through which an organisation’s strategies, policies and processes are delivered to employees who report to them. They are also primarily the route via which employee perceptions and attitudes to those policies are fed back to senior managers and to central HR teams.
Line managers can therefore have a significant impact on how effectively an organisation’s HR strategies and policies are executed, or not. And whether or not they are conscious of that influence and/or deliberately set out to use it positively or negatively can sometimes be anyone’s guess.
The most progressive and best designed HR strategies in the world will fail unless Managers have the knowledge and the tools to do the right things on a day-to-day basis.
Implementing the correct process-driven cloud based HR software system would ensure that the processes and policies are not only visible to Managers but that they are initiated, concluded and recorded against the employee record. Not limited to but examples of this would be a return to work interview following a period of sickness absence, a timely follow up to a flexible working request, the completion of a disciplinary matter or conducting a performance review. All of these people management activities should be dealt with on time and where appropriate, in line with relevant employment legislation.
Please contact Youmanage on 01786 458037 or to [email protected] for further information or to request an online presentation, where your operational HR requirements can be shown to be aligned to the capabilities of the Youmanage platform.
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