For businesses to communicate effectively, People managers need to be encouraged to understand that their employee communication and empowerment of their teams play a significant role in shaping organizational culture and driving productivity.
From the State of the Sector 2023/24 survey, 84% of respondents told us they rely on people managers for communication, 3 in 5 respondents told us managers weren’t hitting the mark – falling below expectations. And it’s employees who will suffer - as data indicates that employee understanding improves when managers are better communicators.
The three main areas where managers are relied upon for communication are:
- Strategy, vision and purpose
- Values, behavior and culture
- Organizational change or integration
And while people managers aren’t meeting expectations for 61% of communicators, there’s also been a decrease in the proportion of respondents who extensively rely on people managers, a decrease in usage of people managers as a listening channel, and we also saw "improving poor people manager skills” drop as a priority for respondents this year. Together, this data raises the question: will there be a shift away from relying on people managers for communication in the future, especially with the rise of digital communication platforms?
Getting the best communication out of managers
When it comes to accountability; 56% of respondents said managers in their organization were not evaluated on communication. That lack of accountability is seemingly being compensated with resources – with managers not evaluated on comms more likely to receive skills support such as on-demand learning, written or downloadable resources, or managers-only forums or channels, training or coaching and mentoring.
However, Jan Burnham, Area VP, warns that evaluating managers on communications skills is not always fair — as employees might conflate the message with the messenger.
Yet we see that managers were much more likely to meet respondents' expectations when they were evaluated on their communication skills. Particularly, on-demand learning supplied specifically by communicators (rather than HR or L&D) was the most promising way to increase the likelihood of managers meeting expectations.
Jan Burnham, Area VP said, "By providing managers with specific communications tools — such as how to have conversations about performance and pay, or talking points about organizational direction — we can improve managers’ communications performance. Focusing on a communications solution is far more practical than overhauling a performance management system — and is within the reach of the comms function."
This year’s survey results clearly demonstrate that when managers are effective communicators, employees have a better understanding of the information being conveyed.
This is even more pertinent for organizations with large deskless populations, as we also found that as the proportion of deskless employees grows, so too does reliance on managers – and inversely the performance of people managers as communicators decreases.
As such, for businesses to communicate effectively, people managers need to be encouraged to understand that their interactions and empowerment of their teams play a significant role in shaping organizational culture and driving productivity.
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