I’m a manager… get me out of here!

Lizzie Buxton

Written By Lynne Webster, Operations Director, AdviserPlus.

9th November 2020

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With a new lockdown in England and the much-anticipated return to work normality very much on hold, there really hasn’t been a more important time to support, upskill and empower our managers to manage effectively.

Our managers really are on the frontline of change.

If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that our managers have had to adapt rapidly to very new ways of thinking, working and managing.

We’ve thrown a lot at them in a short period of time:  managing and engaging remote workers; ensuring the safety of those who remain in the workplace; supporting those furloughed.

Yet in a recent AdviserPlus survey, 71% of HR professionals felt that managers do not have the right level of support to manage ER issues.  A further 73% were not very confident that managers fully understood their role and responsibilities.

The question has to be:  how long can this be sustained in the current environment?

HR faces fresh strategic challenges and opportunities – now.

In recent years there has been much discussion about how HR leaders and teams need to adapt to a volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity (VUCA) environment.  These have been lively discussions but, to be honest, they’ve been mostly theoretical.  Until now.

The events of recent weeks, with the growing restrictions on daily and working life and, ultimately, a return to lockdown, simply highlight the very uncertain times in which we live and work.

This raises several questions and challenges for HR teams, among them:

  • What are the implications for organisational design both now and in the medium term?
  • What should the employee experience look like in a hybrid model?
  • How do you provide a support mechanism to enable managers to be effective in the new work environment without implementing a “hand-holding” approach by HR team members?
  • What does performance management look like in a hybrid model?

Alongside this, HR leaders will be grappling with the understandable demands to reduce costs in order to help mitigate the financial impact caused by COVID-19 on the organisation.

The challenge for HR is clear:  how do you devote enough time and resource to the key strategic issues, while also ensuring that those on the frontline, our managers, feel supported and empowered?

Bringing simplicity to a complex situation.

To support HR teams in focusing on strategic change, AdviserPlus has developed empower – designed to take the most complex of ER processes and apply digital simplicity to help drive efficiency.

empower will help you:

  • Empower your managers with easy access to ER tools, at the right time, to take action with confidence.
  • Drive business improvement through data-driven insight and cost-efficient case management.
  • Have peace of mind that processes are applied fairly, consistently and are compliant.

Find out more about the power of empower to support your managers and reduce HR time spent on ER cases here.

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