Earlier this year the leadership institute Roffey Park published their annual Management Agenda report, a comprehensive survey of 1,460 managers from across the UK.
The report is based on the views of managers and directors across a range of areas such as how their organisation copes with external trends and challenges, how the performance and development of it people are managed and levels of personal engagement with a view to providing indicators of emerging workplace trends in the UK.
One of the key findings was that forty percent of managers said that underperforming staff or teams are not properly dealt with, while over half (55 per cent) said that redundancies are only handled ‘adequately’. In addition, almost half of managers (45 per cent) said they received ‘low levels of support’ from their organisation, yet they faced an increased use of stretch assignments and enhanced responsibilities.
These findings have serious implications for organisations and their managers as they strive to improve efficiency further and deliver more with the same or reduced resources. How will they be able to achieve this if they do not have the fundamental skills to address performance and development issues?
Indeed the report found that this issue is so important that over half (55 percent) of employers had made leadership development a top priority for the year ahead.
Michael Jenkins, Chief Executive of Roffey Park summarised the issue when he said: “Leadership must get the right balance. Whilst leaders need to develop and communicate a clear strategy and vision, they also need to support implementation and the day-to-day management skills of the managers beneath them.”
If organisations are to successfully navigate their way through a prolonged period of austerity and slow economic recovery they need to ensure that their managers have the fundamental skills to deal with underperforming staff and teams. If you would like managers in your organisation to recognise shortfalls in performance, confront poor performance and take action to raise standards of performance then consider our in house Role of the Line Manager 2 day course which will develop your managers to do just this and develop their skills to effectively manage others.