Businesses need to devolve more responsibility to line managers in order to realise the organisation’s full potential, even if it means that sometimes things go wrong, senior HR professionals have warned.
Leading practitioners shared the successes, and pitfalls, of devolving responsibilities to the line with a conference of HRM MA and MBA students at Westminster Business School last week.
Penny Davis, people and talent director at construction and support services firm Balfour Beatty, told the conference about the growth strategy in the firm’s support services business, called Freedom to Perform, which gave local line managers more accountability both in terms of managing people and in terms of profit and loss.
Davis explained that the key to this strategy is “to trust people and let them get on with it”.
“It’s a bit like being a parent, you want your child to grow up and be successful but actually letting go of them knowing that they are going to make mistakes is very hard,” she told the conference. “A lot of HR and managers like control because we are very risk averse, but letting go is where the real power is.”
She said there still needed to be a prescriptive framework to identify and communicate the correct behaviours to managers, and it was important to have ‘zero tolerance for behaviours that were counter-culture.’ She cited the example of an employee fraud case that had occurred soon after the reform which had given the company pause for thought.
“It was a really disappointing piece of behaviour, and we did think maybe things had gone too far,” said Davis. “But then I was on site and saw an example where a line manager had set up a new way of delivering a service for a client with outstanding results.
She added: “Don’t pull things back centrally [if things go wrong], that’s the easy answer. There is a risk with letting go and we have to balance that against the gains. It depends on your organisational context.
Excellent – particularly the demonstration (by Penny Davis) of the importance of HR and managers getting crystal clear on ‘correct behaviours’. In my experience managers are often reluctant to be seen as prescriptive around behaviours – this article explains why it’s important to help managers overcome that reluctance. (For more detail, I’ve written about the improtance of managing behaviours in this blog http://managing-employee-performance.com/an-essential-strategy-for-managing-employee-performance-%e2%80%93-the-focus-on-behaviours/ )
Joan Henshaw
The Managing Employee Performance Coach
I agree that line managers need to be empowered to manage but it is vital that they are given the tools and skills to do so effectively. Too often this is not the case and problems often start with actions or inactions at this level. It is the most important relationship and therefore deserves investment.