How can HR help managers succeed in their role?

Did you know that if a new manager struggles, their entire team will struggle too? According to Gallup research, management success accounts for at least 70% of their team’s employee engagement.

In other words, an ineffective team leader could result in low employee engagement. As the team responsible for people strategy, HR professionals need to keep an eye on supervisors too, especially first-time leaders.

Regardless of whether they are an experienced leader or new to leading a team, HR professionals should be on hand to help guide and transition them as they step up to their role, and play a pivotal part in management success.

How can we define management success?

So, what are some measures of success that HR can bolster?

As with any role in the business, leaders should have clearly defined key metrics to strive for. While the exact numbers will vary from company to company, and role to role, consider identifying KPIs in these areas:

• Team goals – does each supervisor’s direct report understand what their overall goals are, and are they tracking their progress towards them? Do these goals align with the overall business objectives?
• Performance metrics – are their team members keeping up or deviating from their daily numbers like sales units/website hits/calls answered/products delivered?
• Recruitment – how efficient is the lead’s recruitment process? Can they easily identify suitable candidates, and do they have an effective approach to securing them?
• Team happiness – the team lead/employee relationship has a significant influence on employee experience. Gauge employee job satisfaction with employee surveys.
• Retention – what is the leader’s track record of employee turnover? What is the average length of their direct reports’ career with the company?

How can the HR department ensure management success?

The HR department has a unique position of being based across each part of an organisation. They act as a conduit between the company’s executive function and each team member. They take care of employment administration and the employee lifecycle – but they also set the tone of a business and monitor performance.

Using HR expertise, you can help set up team leads to do their best work – fostering growth and excellence across the business.

Here are some ways your HR department can support team leaders to perform at their best.

1. Speak to the team first

If you are hiring a new supervisor, it’s important for the HR department to communicate this to the team.

Before you start to help the new leader in their new role, make sure anyone they will be managing is aware of the new organisational structure and hierarchy. Ensure they know exactly what to do if they have questions, concerns or feedback about the change.

Creating a great communication process in your workplace is vital to making this happen. Examples of this in action can be regular team meetings in the initial weeks or one-on-one meetings with the team members to check in with them about how they are feeling about the new shift in roles.

If the supervisor will be moving into a newly created role, it’s still important to open up the floor for team members to voice any feedback or concerns.

2. Set up a mentor program

Another way HR teams can offer more support to first-time leaders is to set up an internal mentor scheme with other managers other than their immediate supervisor. This will help them have sounding boards to navigate the new world of management.

They can hear advice from different types of team lead and ultimately find their own management style.

3. Provide ongoing leadership development

If an employee has been promoted to a leadership position, they can’t keep relying on the same skills they had in their previous role. They need to continue to learn and develop in order to really make a difference to the team.

It is good practice for HR teams to provide supervisors access to training and development programs. It’s important that every employee within the business has access toresources for professional growth. This gives them the opportunity to learn and grow their pre-existing skills or learn new skills and insights that help them in their job. This should not stop just because someone becomes a manager.

4. Clearly express the company’s values

Company values should dictate an organisation’s objectives, purpose and spirit. When they are clearly defined, they should have significant influence over your team and act as a guide to follow and rely on.

With their knowledge of company goals and their business-wide insights, HR staff are the perfect people to create and communicate a set of values.

HR teams should be the strongest advocates of company values, expressing them clearly to leaders. HR teams can advise supervisors with issues in respect of the company’s values, and this information can easily be passed on to their direct reports – creating a powerful trickle-down effect.

5. Create a goal-setting framework

For any growing business – having a united framework for goal-setting is essential. Without it, there’s a risk of teams falling out of alignment, working in different directions, and away from company objectives.

Similarly to values, HR professionals should be advocates and experts onhow the company sets goals. HR will have insights into what the company’s key goals are for the next month, year and five years. They can act as a springboard for supervisors who are creating goals for their own teams.

Create a free-flowing feedback loop between the HR team and leaders to ensure transparency around goal setting. HR professionals should implement a formal performance framework to help supervisors keep track of their team’s progress.

6. Guide recruitment processes

Finding the perfect candidate for a role is more complex than most people think. From defining roles to advertising and interviewing to spotting red flags when hiring employees – it’s a tough and time-consuming task.

As people experts, HR should guide hiring managers through this process. Whether that’s from referring the best applicants to screening possible candidates and giving interviewing guidance at each step. HR professionals can also manage the task of bringing other staff members into the process and oversee the feedback provided by each interviewer.

Making recruitment an entirely collaborative process between management and HR can be the difference between finding someone who’s just ok for the role and hiring your next unicorn.

7. Teach the ‘soft skills’ of management

A lot of people in leadership roles are never taught about management success. In the general career progression model, talented specialists step up to leading a team- usually by being handed more responsibilities and several direct reports.

It’s at this point that there’s often a shock for leaders. It’s no longer just on their shoulders to perform in their area – they also have to excel at essential ‘soft skills’; communicating clearly with their team, managing workloads and monitoring their staff members’ wellbeing.

This generally won’t come naturally to new leaders, but it’s what human resources is all about. HR can help supervisors move beyond being senior staff members and help them become the best leaders.

How can HR do this? With their existing knowledge, they can teach managers the best ways to communicate with their staff during performance reviews, they can advise on teamwork and leadership, and they can help leaders to understand an employee’s mental, professional and emotional needs.

It’s okay for managers – especially new to the role – to admit that soft skills aren’t second nature to them. Training and development don’t stop being important when people reach more senior levels. Organise regular meetings between the HR team and team leaders to share knowledge in this area and decide together if any upskilling is required.

8. Streamline employee management

As well as soft skills, there is a lot of administration that many people don’t consider when they start managing staff.

Processing leave requests, managing shifts, setting up learning pathways and distributing rewards and recognition. These are essential parts of managing staff, yet they can often be too time-consuming – involving a lot of repetitive paperwork.

One of the best ways that HR can help team leaders in management success is to invest in digital solutions. HR software solutions like Employment Hero can streamline these tasks and reduce human error in the process.

Human resources and management. Stronger together.

Becoming a leader is so much more than just taking a step up the career ladder. It takes a lot of additional consideration, training and assistance to be successful. HR professionals play a fundamental role in ensuring management success, and when the two work together seamlessly, the benefits are endless.

If you’re looking to streamline your HR processes so you can focus on what really matters, like supporting your team, Employment Hero has you covered. Employment Hero is the world’s first Employment OS (operating system) that offers everything your business needs, from finding and hiring top talent using SmartMatch to seamlessly onboarding new hires, automating complex payroll, and driving employee engagement and morale, all backed by UK-based expert support.

Want to learn more about essential HR skills? Download our Intro to HR Management to master the foundations.

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