Intro: Staff are bunkering down, managers are overwhelmed Remember the quiet quitting era? It’s recent, and brief, and it’s all over! With the tailend of ’24 coming up, Australian organisations now face a more complex staffing issue: employee retention is up while employee happiness and engagement are falling. The pain is being felt keenly by middle managers (particularly female and regional managers), who are burnt out, stressed and overwhelmed. And nearly half are angry! These trends, uncovered in the recent… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Management
Are your managers destroying staff engagement?
July 24 2024Many leaders would love to know the key to staff engagement in their workplace. Well, let’s start with manager engagement. Managers not engaged globally Only 3 in 10 managers globally are engaged in their jobs, according to Gallup’s most recent global survey of workplaces (engagement meaning feeling involved and enthusiastic about the workplace and one’s role). The obvious question is: how can managers who aren’t highly engaged in their jobs engage and improve the wellbeing of those they lead? Clearly,… Read more »
Time to address the Great Stagnation
July 17 2024As a team member in mid 2024, you might be feeling depleted, but stuck! If you’re an employer, you might be noticing some disturbing signs of burnout in your teams, and feeling an urge to reassess how you support your staff. Or perhaps you’re feeling a need to help individuals connect their work to a broader purpose? It’s not just you. It’s consistent with a growing attempt to re-energise rising numbers of employees who either feel stuck in their jobs,… Read more »
Middle Managers need help (in the new world of work)
September 28 2022The shift to remote work is particularly impacting on middle managers in all larger organisations. We should address this now. Middle managers play a vital role, and it’s just not on to let the role – or the incumbents – languish, when we actually can meet the challenge. Why are these roles so important? Middle management roles are critical positions in all mid to large organisations; indeed, the impact of middle managers on business success can be ‘make or break’:… Read more »
Should leaders own all decisions?
August 30 2022Organisational success depends on leaders making smart decisions. And sometimes, that’s to delegate that decision to someone else. If you’ve worked with senior leaders who insist on being involved in (ahem, ‘making’) every decision in the organisation, you’ll know how frustrating, disempowering and unproductive it is. I’ve seen it at close hand, and it’s incredibly destructive. Perhaps like me, you’ve spent too long over some decisions that aren’t ultimately worth that amount of energy. As I’ve discovered, there are a… Read more »
It’s REBOOT – and time to dream again
October 19 2021Key points: WFH is now a real option, at least part-time, for many organisations. While away, many staff have been plotting a career shift, some, a drastic one. Many businesses may now have to factor in “The Great Resignation”. This will all impact on workplace design, workforce planning, and recruiting. Managers: it’s time for some new thinking. Back in 2019, a request…. Remember this scene in pre-2019? A typical employee in a typical workplace lodges a request to work from… Read more »
MBWA – a highly effective management hack, or a dud?
July 2 2019What if there was ONE easy way to be a great manager? MBWA, or ‘Management-By-Walking-Around’, has been put forward as one such method. It involves managers being out on the floor, directly engaging with team members, while also observing frontline workers in action. Sounds great huh – get out there with the team, show that you’re one of them, be a part of it… In support of this idea, there are some studies do suggest that managers who are… Read more »
OMG! Did you get that offer?
November 4 2015“OMG, OMG, OMG!!!!!” Yep, that was the reaction recently when we got an offer of a CEO position. I use the term ‘we’ here, although my involvement was very much in the background. In reality this was about the success, in a competitive job application process, of a focused and committed coaching client. The triple “OMG…” was a direct quote from my client’s partner, as they sat back and celebrated on the evening of the day the offer came in…. Read more »
It’s ‘Performance Management’, not footsteps in a dark alley!
September 10 2015The sound of footsteps… Being told ‘You’re going into performance management’ is typically about as much fun as hearing footsteps behind you in a dark alley. And neurological research demonstrates that the physical impact is similar – the ‘fight or flight’ response is pretty common. But I always get concerned for another reason when I hear that someone is about to be ‘Performance Managed’. This paints the picture of performance management as the big bogeyman of workplaces. And while often… Read more »
Engagement, climate and performance – what’s the connection?
March 25 2014High turnover typically means low organisational health – it’s disruptive and expensive. ‘Commitment to stay’ is supposed to be great. But low turnover can be a problem too, depending on how it relates to engagement. How do you know which you have? Employee engagement ‘Engagement’ has now ascended to a level akin to the holy grail. Engagement tends to mean people stay on with the organisation, but sometimes ‘intention to stay’ gets confused with real engagement. Puzzling…? The wrong sort… Read more »
