It’s no secret that managers are the key to unlocking HR outcomes. But how to engage them as partners in HR efforts can be less obvious. When the relationship between HR and people managers breaks down, it becomes impossible to move the needle on employee engagement, performance and retention.
So how do you get people managers to see HR as an ally instead of an adversary?
Establishing and nurturing a partnership between the two is essential for business success. Here are 5 ways to make this a reality within your organization.
1. Define your goals related to employee engagement involving stakeholders from throughout your organization.
Employee engagement became a priority for us at CoreMedical in 2018. Then the pandemic rolled around, and as a medical staffing company, we doubled down. We started by asking what employee engagement meant to our business and mapping out a formula for success based on that vision. To do this, we brought in various voices from throughout the organization, so we were co-creating what this looked like.
We asked questions like: How do we want our leaders to engage? How do we ensure employees feel that engagement equates to satisfaction? We made sure to rally our senior leadership team early on, talking openly and aligning goals across the entire company. We also prioritized thinking beyond perks like parties and swag to instead dig in on intrinsic motivation and what would sustain long term engagement.
2. Make HR approachable and get out of the weeds.
You need to be open to ideas, challenges and everything in between in order for HR and people managers to be allies. Collaboration with managers at every stage is key, and this requires being approachable.
It is also important to get out of the HR “weeds.” Focus on the bigger picture of team growth and engagement to make HR a proactive force in driving the advancement of the entire team. This function is no longer just about managing the workforce. It’s about shaping employees’ development paths, ensuring engagement is a priority for everyone at the company, creating a culture of support and fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. When you get out of the doldrums of reactive, administrative tasks, you open the door for HR to be a strategic partner to managers in driving business success.
3. Create a clear set of expectations for what it means to be a manager.
We’ve long used agreement letters at CoreMedical for our sales professionals so they know what their goals are and what they agree to when accepting a position. Our HR and senior leadership teams decided to mirror that for leadership with the approach being to co-develop agreements versus expectations. We discussed collaboratively with managers the point of the agreement letters and what they should entail. This gave accountability to what was expected of people leaders on a day-to-day basis, serving as an important framework for how leadership across the company would review performance, work toward shared goals and ensure efforts are focused.
With these agreements in place, we know our entire management team is moving in the same direction. The alignment has enhanced our efficiency and strengthened our sense of shared purpose. And this level of role clarity has created a tremendous amount of psychological safety, as everyone knows exactly how to show up to deliver for their team.
Additionally, the employee experience is more consistent because the agreement letters ensure a regular cadence of one-on-one’s, check-ins and communication with managers. Consistency delivers an improved employee experience across the board leading to more engaged employees and better performance.
4. Have a single source of information to measure HR outcomes.
It’s no longer the case that HR can rally company leaders behind our requests if they don’t see them tied to business outcomes. To solve this, we use a performance management platform, which our people managers have collaboratively worked with HR on integrating into our day-to-day work. We started small, using just two features of the platform. As we added more modules of the platform over time, including use of engagement surveys and performance reviews, managers could see how all those pieces come together to keep the conversation flowing between managers and employees. This eliminates sifting through old notebooks and scattered documents to piece together information for performance reviews and check-ins. You have this rich, single source of information to house data, measure progress and take action related to employee performance and engagement. It has been a tremendous asset in keeping everyone on the same page and helping HR to demonstrate the impact of our work.
5. Offer resources and ongoing support to managers.
You want your managers to focus less on tasks and more on strategic outcomes. To do this, you need to arm them with coaching and resources to be successful and help ensure their actions have meaning and impact. That can be done through on-demand training, live coaching and other tools to help managers learn, practice and apply new skills into the daily flow of work. A supportive learning environment can reduce turnover and increase engagement. It also helps managers feel engaged and valued.
You should also place an emphasis on strengthening the relationship between managers and HR who in the past may have struggled with trust and collaboration, whether at your company or at prior jobs. Collaboration between HR and management can be one of the most strategic drivers of success within an organization, and that’s especially true when managers can act on HR data and insights. This becomes surprisingly simple and prescriptive when you have the right tools in place to guide managers on what exactly those actions should be. By helping to facilitate their success in this way, you set the tone that you’re there for your managers as a strategic ally to help drive the company forward.
Lynn Cuomo is the Vice President of HR at CoreMedical Group, a leading national healthcare staffing agency specializing in placement of healthcare professionals in nursing, allied therapy, interim professionals, as well as locum tenens professionals.