manager effectiveness

August 25, 2020June 29, 2023

Labor tracking in an increasingly complex legal environment

Labor tracking is necessary for employers to ensure they’re paying their workforce correctly, but the unique labor laws of certain cities and states throw a wrench in an organization’s practices.

The word “complex” does not even scratch the surface of how complicated labor tracking is given the various state and local labor laws that govern sick leave, overtime, minimum wage and more, according to Traci Fiatte, chief executive officer, professional & commercial staffing at Randstad US. “If you’re not using an automated [employee] scheduling software and you have employees in multiple states, I’m not sure how you keep track of it all,” she added.

According to Workforce.com’s 2020 “HR State of the Industry” report, only 40.5 percent of respondents said they used HR software for workforce management, including time and attendance, and only 29.5 percent said they used it for compensation management. There’s still room for improvement for organizations who’ve yet to use automated software to help with labor tracking and management.

Rely on specialized employees and software

Fiatte suggested that organizations have personnel dedicated to understanding varying laws and a payroll system that can be programmed to understand the different laws.

For example, overtime is an area of labor law where different regulations can confuse an already complex process, and software may have the capabilities to allow managers to take overtime laws into account when they plan schedules. In most states, “overtime” is defined as anything more than 40 hours a week, but in California it’s defined as more than 8 hours worked in a day.

“Unless you have a system to track that, you almost need a staff dedicated to manually tracking it, which I can’t imagine any large employer being able to do,” Fiatte said. “The name of the game is automation and making sure you have the right systems to help manage it.”

The biggest gap here is that while big national brands have this figured out, others may not.

“The companies I worry for are the companies that are small enough that they may be family-owned, regionally-based or [spread across] four or five states, but they don’t have the level of sophistication to have legal teams or HR teams to be managing the variances between state laws,” Fiatte said. “It’s those companies that could be taken by surprise two years from now when they get audited, and they’ve broken a bunch of laws they didn’t know they were breaking.”

Organizations in a situation like this can find a specialist to help them manage the dynamic and complex labor law environment, she added.

Encourage managers to stay up to date on the latest labor laws

Chuck Buiocchi, senior director of BPS operations at staffing company Kelly Services, said that at his organization they use the latest technology to ensure managers aren’t expected to know everything. They also have a group whose sole purpose is to keep the rest of the organization abreast of changing labor laws.

Buiocchi said he would encourage managers to stay as up to date as possible on changing labor laws. While they may not become experts, keeping themselves educated is a smart thing to do.

Keep documentation

Labor tracking helps organizations control wage costs, but that’s not the only benefit. It’ll also help any organization audited by the Department of Labor.

“I can’t stress enough the importance of labor tracking, not only from a financial standpoint in terms of making sure people are paid properly but even in terms of the legal standpoint,” said Albert Rizzo, adjunct assistant professor at the NYU School of Professional Studies within its human capital management program.

“If the company ever gets audited by the Department of Labor, it only takes one employee to make a complaint about failure to get paid minimum wage or overtime for that to trigger an audit by the Department of Labor,” he added. “And once that audit is triggered, they could very well go after the employer and every employee to see if the employer has paid any one of those employees improperly, even if they’ve never lodged a complaint.”

Encourage straightforward conversations

Companies must be very deliberate about payroll policies, procedures and expectations and how that information is communicated among leadership, management and employees, Buiocchi said.

“We will not allow people to work off the clock,” he said about his own organization. “We don’t trade for comp time or anything like that. We live to not only the letter but the spirit of the laws in which we operate, and we expect our leaders and our employees to do the same. And we set those expectations and we manage the performance for those who don’t meet those expectations.”

Also read: Give managers the time they need to sharpen up their all-around skills

If someone works off the clock, in this case, supervisors can have a conversation with that employee, make sure they get paid, make sure they don’t do it again and discipline them if necessary. Maybe the supervisor finds out that the direct manager of the employee is mismanaging something or overworking employees, and then it’s up to the supervisor to find a resolution for that.

July 9, 2020September 8, 2022

Common scheduling problems: Addressing staff turnover and improving retention

Employee turnover is a big issue for many employers who hire hourly workers and can help contribute to common scheduling problems like understaffing or last minute schedule changes. And the industries with the highest average turnover are the ones that generally have more hourly workers:

According to the 2018 Mercer U.S. Turnover Survey, which looked at 163 U.S. organizations, the three highest turnover industries are: retail & wholesale (60.5 percent average turnover), other manufacturing (26.7 percent) and consumer goods (21.5 percent). Meanwhile, those with the lowest turnover include life sciences (14.5 percent), insurance (15.5 percent) and banking/financial services (16 percent).

For businesses, turnover means spending more time and money on the recruiting, hiring and training process. And it also means that making schedules may get complicated when the staff list is constantly changing and when surprise absences come up after someone has quit.

But company leaders and managers are not powerless here. Here are some ways they can address high staff turnover and avoid some of those pesky, common scheduling problems that make managers’ jobs just a little more complicated.

Understand why employees leave

One reason for turnover is when an employee perceives inequitable treatment in the workplace, according to the Academy of Management, which published the paper “Inequity and Its Relationship To Turnover Among Hourly Workers” in 2017.

The paper explored this relationship within the major production shops of the Boeing company and found that at best inequitable treatment leads employees to not be their most productive selves. At worst, they will leave the job. There are a few ways organizations can address this, the paper added, such as by improving working conditions if necessary and by paying attention to how supervisors treat workers and responding appropriately.

The adage “employees leave managers, not companies” is a subject of debate among the HR community, but research does support it, said Robert Teachout, legal editor at consultancy XpertHR. The studies above are just a couple that show the potential negative effects of bad management practices.

Bad management practices include not being supportive of employees and being too harsh on employees for making certain mistakes. It boils down to a general lack of respect, Teachout said. Employees want the same basic things, he added: to be treated with respect and fairness, to do something that matters at their job and to get the opportunity to learn, grow, develop and be promoted.

Teachout used the example of the type of manager that remembers all the mistakes an employee makes but never recognizes the good things they’ve done. When an employee is reviewed unfairly like this, that may contribute to them wanting to leave the job.

Also read: Absence management is increasingly vital for managers to understand

Provide training for managers

From the manager’s point of view, many of them have been promoted because they were good at their job. But they don’t get training on certain people management skills upon getting that promotion, Teachout said. It’s up to the higher-ups at a company to prepare managers with the needed communication skills like how to engage with employees or how to have difficult conversations with them.

This type of training is more important for front-line managers than for more mid-level managers, Teachout added. Front-line managers have a direct relationship with staff and have the opportunity to make or break employees’ experiences working for the company.

“[They] can do more damage. That’s where toxic workplaces get created a lot of the time. The frontline managers don’t know what they’re doing, and you give them a checklist and therefore they don’t act like human beings,” Teachout said.

Lack of hours and flexibility

According to a 2017 FSG and Hart Research Associates survey, 83 percent of employees said if they had more control over their work schedules, they’d be more likely to stay at their current job.

Also, 61 percent of those surveyed said they’ve struggled at work because they have a hard time making enough money to pay for basics like rent and food. More hours are especially helpful to these people. “Offering existing workers additional hours, rather than hiring new workers, may be one way to save on costs and improve employee satisfaction,” the survey conductors wrote in an article for Harvard Business Review.

There are several strategies to respond to these employee concerns, the article stated. For one, companies can better train managers to support their teams and build a better team/workplace culture. Secondly, employers can offer hourly employees more opportunities for job growth within the company. Third, as lack of flexibility is one of the most common scheduling problems, organizations can be more open to offering predictable schedules to employees.

Also read: Shift scheduling strategies can be improved through technology

Reconsider existing workplace policies

While employees do often leave bad managers, bad policies make it even easier for employees to quit, Teachout said. These other factors could include low pay, a lack of benefits or the lack of the opportunity for advancement.

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the fact that many essential, hourly workers do not get paid sick leave or certain other benefits, Teachout said.

“One would think [that] out of self-interest alone, the restaurant and retail industries would look and say, even if we’re not required to provide paid sick leave, let’s provide paid sick leave. Because it only takes one person with an infectious disease coming in — because otherwise they don’t get paid — to shut down your business for months,” he said. “So isn’t it more cost-efficient to give them paid sick leave and say, ‘If you’re sick, stay home?’”

More than just putting policies in place, organizations must also train managers on how to apply these policies to the workplace equitably and fairly, he said. For example, a grocery store manager may allow through some flexible work policy for a woman to come into work and leave work a little early so that she can pick up her kid from childcare. If the manager does not allow the same for a father, that could be viewed as discrimination. Managers must make sure they are not violating the law when they’re dealing with company policies.

“You want to create a workplace that people want to work at,” Teachout said. “If people feel this is a place they want to work at, they feel loyalty. They get a sense of teamwork, a huge piece of the puzzle that gets missed all the time. When people work as part of a team, they feel more loyalty and are more engaged than people working individually. ”

June 25, 2020June 29, 2023

Keys to effectively managing a remote workforce

Today’s growing remote workforce has transformed our way of working and created a new normal that’s far from ordinary. This shift in how we work has created the need for new strategies and tactics for effectively reaching and engaging employees remotely.

As some companies claim remote working is here to stay, workforce leaders and business managers must develop and hone remote workforce management skills, identifying and refining ways to ensure employees feel supported and can continue working effectively outside the office.

Understand your employee base and communicate accordingly

Remote working isn’t a new concept, but the broader shift to remote working caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is unique. Employees who are accustomed to working from home or enjoy remote working will thrive during this time. Others will struggle to successfully navigate their new work environment.

Show grace to employees and colleagues who you know are struggling to adapt. As a workforce leader, it’s your job to ensure employees feel supported and are poised for success, regardless of their unique situation. Avoid taking a one-size-fits-all approach to communication.

Regardless of communication style and preferences, schedule regular video and/or phone check-ins with your team and employees. Face-to-face communication is more important now than ever before. Video conversations with employees you might not see face-to-face, whether that’s because you sit in different offices or your workstreams don’t frequently overlap, can help you forge strong relationships across your entire organization.

Provide resources to meet employee needs

Understand your team’s needs and put resources in place to help meet them. Host virtual town halls, consultation sessions and webinars on important issues impacting both your organization and the world. Whether that’s celebrating diversity to promote unity or offering support for working parents, do your best to provide the right resources for employees.

In addition to identifying specific needs, remaining cognizant of the work/life balance is crucial. Share what you’re doing to maintain a healthy work/life balance. Suggest outlets for your team to relieve stress and disconnect, whether that’s through exercising, meditating, reading, cooking, painting or volunteering.

Knowing they have your support in maintaining a definitive work/life balance — even if that means taking a break during working hours — is key to positively impacting your employees’ mental and emotional well-being. Although more employees are working from home and many travel restrictions are in place, you should also encourage your team to fully sign off by using their vacation days (as available and in line with company policy).

Maintain open lines of direct communication

When working remotely, it’s important for employees and colleagues to know that you’re available even though they can’t come to your office or meet in a conference room. Communicate the times of day you’re typically available and your preferred methods of virtual communication.

I’ve developed a system with my supervisor: If my boss sends me a text message, the ask needs to be addressed immediately, while an instant message is less urgent. If I want to schedule an ad-hoc meeting, it should be scheduled for early morning. Communicate to employees the best time and ways to reach you, and be virtually available when you say you will be.

This goes both ways. At a time when homes have become home offices, developing an understanding of your employees’ schedules and demonstrating your support will go a long way. Is there a window of time when their child is napping and that’s when they prefer to schedule meetings? Do they like to unplug in the afternoon, perhaps to take a walk with their dog?

Work to understand your employees’ schedules, and do your best to support them.

Employee management through effective communication

Managing a remote workforce effectively comes from truly knowing your employees and working hard to meet them where they are. During this tumultuous time, when possible, keep it light. Share a piece of good news, a poem, story or quote that’s meaningful to you. Look on the bright side and encourage employees and colleagues to do the same.

Being a constant in your employees’ lives, communicating with them, listening to them and building real connections is key to successful leadership today and every day.

June 24, 2020June 22, 2020

Why an absence program is vital for any organization

Absence management programs and policies are increasingly significant for organizations, especially as more leave laws pass on a local, state and federal level. Managers dealing with absences from their staff must know what their company’s absence program means for their own role and responsibilities.

Creating an absence program or policy can be complicated, and there are several types of leave that must work with each other. For example, how does a company’s paid time off policy align with paid family leave laws, short-term disability plans or the Family and Medical Leave Act? What if employees are using PTO when they should be using short-term disability?

Here is some guidance for employers who want to put something more formal in place and stay up-to-date on changing leave laws.

Creating a strong foundation

The foundation of any absence management program is that it takes into account all the local, state and federal leave laws that an organization must follow. Before a company decides what it wants to do, it must understand what it has to do, said Maura McLaughlin, partner with law firm Morgan, Brown & Joy, LLP. Different laws may have different employee count thresholds, for example.

There are many types of leave, and as new leave laws come into effect, organizations should look at their current policies in case an update is necessary, McLaughlin said.

Staying up to date with new laws can be done a few different ways, said Simon Camaj, absence and disability practice leader at Mercer. A company can outsource management to a carrier/vendor whose job it is to stay informed on the leave law landscape. A company could potentially rely on three parties together — a vendor partner, a consultant partner and in-house counsel — to make the best decisions. Meanwhile, if a company keeps decisions internal and relies on its in-house counsel, that’s more burden on the attorneys.

It’s up to a company to make the best decision for themselves, but there are costs and benefits either way.

From must-haves to nice-to-haves

The next step is deciding how your company wants to address those areas where the law offers organizations some discretion or flexibility, McLaughlin said. How will the company decide on accruals for paid sick leave — lump sum or hours worked? Does the company want to make a certain type of leave paid rather than unpaid? What else does the company want to offer?

These decisions depend on the culture of the organization and what resources it has, McLaughlin said. What is common to see in the absence program or policy of many companies, though, is longer bereavement leave than the law requires and paid parental leave in states where it is not required.

Documentation and communication

What an organization also must consider is how it will document the necessary information for its records and communicate to employees what forms or notices they must fill out for different types of leave.

The onboarding process is one area where employees may be informed about their company’s absence management policies, McLaughlin said. Here they can learn who they go to when they must take time off or some type of leave — their manager, HR or someone else? They can also learn the correct modes of communication to reach out to that person, whether that’s a phone call, email or something else.

Manager training

Finally, McLaughlin said, organizations can train managers and HR professionals to make sure they know what signs to take notice of that may signal a potential upcoming absence. Is an employee exhibiting some behavior that may predict that this person may be eligible for FMLA leave? For example, an employee may say something along the lines of, “I was in the hospital overnight” or “I need to be on bedrest for just a few days.” While these might not lead to any prolonged absence, if they do managers can be prepared, having considered the employee’s absence or potential reasonable accommodations beforehand.

This training can also stress that managers cannot retaliate against employees and teach managers how to handle an absence in a non-discriminatory way. A major absence management challenge is managers being able to manage employees consistently so it doesn’t look like discrimination, McLaughlin said.

How this type of training is conducted depends on what internal resources an organization has, McLaughlin said. It can come from an internal training function or from external training. Either way, there can be a baseline training session along with refreshers as laws or company policies evolve.

The significance of absence management

An absence program is vital to an organization. Managers don’t want to fall into the mistake of not managing this until it’s too late, McLaughlin said.

“You may have [an employee] who has not been held accountable, and now you’re at a point of it just being a real problem from an operations and business perspective. But you have no documentation of the fact that it’s been a problem or that you’ve given them all the leave they’re entitled to. And now you have a problem that could have been [avoided,]” she said.

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020

How to improve manager effectiveness

on-demand workforce, benefits, freelancers, collaboration, communication

As the link between front-line workers and company leadership, managers have a key role in making a company run smoothly. But due to the nature of their job, they also have the potential to negatively impact business in terms of reputation, employee relations and business results. That’s why leaders must pay attention to how to improve manager effectiveness.

Some 32 percent of employees do not feel that their immediate manager acts as a coach and mentor, according to a 2019 Mercer study. Furthermore, 23 percent do not feel inspired by their boss and 29 percent do not think their manager evaluates their performance fairly.

Organizations may struggle with how to improve manager effectiveness, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Here are some basic guidelines for managers and company leaders to address this.

Also read: Employee communication how-to’s during a crisis

Advice for management

1. Build trust: Not cultivating team trust is where many teams fall apart, said Sari Wilde, managing vice president at Gartner, whose areas of expertise include recruiting, current and future leadership, and critical skills and competencies.

Managers can build this trust several ways, she said. They set out to build personal relationships with their team members. They can run their team in a way that embraces and celebrates individual differences.

Also read: How technology can help your employee engagement strategy

One exercise Wilde’s team uses to build trust and strengthen the relationships between employees and managers is called “Each One Teach One.” Each team member takes turns saying something they want to learn and something they’d be willing to teach someone else. This gives everyone the opportunity to get to know each other more and learn from one another.

2. Ask questions: Good managers don’t make assumptions about their employees’ work, Wilde said. They ask questions.

Ineffective managers may assume they know everything and tell employees how to do their jobs to a microscopic level. But it’s much more effective to ask questions, understand employee needs and realize the context in which they are working. From there, they can break these assumptions or misconceptions and manage more accurately.

Advice for leadership

1. Define effectiveness: Create key performance indicators for managers and specific, measurable objectives around those KPIs, said Andres Lares, managing partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute. What do you want you managers to do, and why are those objectives important to the organization?

KPIs vary among supervisors. For sales managers, they include average sales per employee or this month’s sales compared to previous months. For other managers, they include evaluation results from team members and how many of them have earned promotions.

Wilde also provided some KPIs for effective managers, including: skills preparedness, employee engagement, intent to stay at the organization and discretionary effort (how hard employees work).

2. Be patient: Have realistic expectations of how much time it will take to see results.

“If you want them to build trust with their team, they need the time to develop it and the time, from a daily or weekly standpoint to develop and manage their team,” Lares said.

To help managers meet these expectations, they need resources and processes in place to help them, he added. Without offering the proper tools and formal processes, leaders are not allowing managers the necessities to actually achieve the organization’s goals.

For example, at SNI, they implement manager field guides within the organization so that managers can use what they’ve learned in training. “This gives managers a tool to coach their people and establishes a cadence (time) for them,” Lares said.

3. Rewards and recognition: Like any other employee who wants acknowledgement from their managers when they have done a good job at completing an important assignment, so do managers need that recognition from company leadership, according to Lares.

“Increasing their team’s productivity should be rewarded — for both the team and the manager,” he said, adding that this is much easier if KPIs have been defined and if managers are provided the resources to achieve these goals.

Leaders continue to coach, train and invest in managers who improve. If managers don’t hit their KPIs, even with ample time, tools and processes available, there’s a possibility that the job isn’t a good fit for them. Leaders can potentially change their roles and see if that fits their skillset better.

Effective managers will ultimately benefit the organization, Wilde said. “When you have a great manager, they are much more likely to create great managers underneath them,” she said. Managers should be good role models for the people below them at the organization. One way to recognize good managers is by assigning them high potential, highly dedicated team members. The manager will benefit, and the employee can learn under them and go on to become another effective manager for the organization.

The risk of not addressing ineffective managers

While how to improve manager effectiveness may seem difficult, it’s important to offset the many potential negative consequences of bad management. The axiom “people leave managers, not companies” exists for a reason.

Ineffective managers may drive down team performance, limit creativity and risk-taking on the team and make employees want to leave, Wilde said. As the author of the book “The Connector Manager: Why Some Leaders Build Exceptional Talent — and Others Don’t,” she’s found several reasons people leave managers.

Some managers have an “always on” approach with the team, she said, meaning that they give ongoing feedback to employees so excessively that employees feel suffocated and stifled. “Always on” managers want to be the person to give advice, answer their questions and tell them what to do — even if they don’t know the answer. They may be trying to help, but being involved in every aspect of an employee’s work can be detrimental.

Managers aren’t helpless if their current management style isn’t working. They can work to improve their shortcomings and offset these potential negative consequences and ultimately build a stronger team, making their organization strong as well.