HR can step in to make employees more independent as trust in managers wain

As managers are losing confidence in their ability to guide their team on a day-to-day basis and just under a quarter of employees trust their managers to help them out in these areas, a research and advisory company is calling out for HR to motivate employees to tackle their own problems.

This was revealed by Gartner’s report ‘The Modern Employee Experience’ which found that only 24 per cent of employees trust their manager to help in their day-to-day jobs.  The company holds the opinion that HR can motivate employees in taking a more active role in tailoring their own day-to-day activities.

The three tips Gartner believes HR can offer employees to make the more hands on is:

  • Minimise downsides to employees: Ensure employees feel comfortable using available information to personalise their experience without the concern of any risk or downside.
  • Nudge employees: Provide employees with clear guidelines that direct them toward the appropriate next steps required to use the information to personalise their day-to-day experience.
  • Offer connections to others: Help employees seek out proper support from their networks, often from their peers, that will help them clarify how others have used the information to better personalise their experiences.

 

It also found that 83 per cent of HR leaders believe responding to negative experiences quickly can have a significant impact on an employee’s overall experience. Gartner believes HR leaders need to manage employees’ positive memories and reframe their negative ones.

Leah Johnson, vice president in the Gartner HR practice said:

Providing an organization wide progress report is a great way to remind employees of the investments the organisation has made to improve their experiences and how these improvements have impacted them personally. Our research shows that incorporating a ‘manage the memory’ approach yields a 14 per cent improvement in how satisfied employees are with their experience.

In order to obtain these results Gartner surveyed 2,848 employees from 21 different industries and 27 countries.

 

 

 

 

 

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Darius McQuaid

Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.