Do you have a high turnover rate or low employee engagement levels? It may be because you're not looking after your managers! In this video, learn about the data that suggests manager burnout is at a record high, and how you can invest in simple development training to help managers and their teams thrive. Don't miss this important message from Slack Technologies' Future Forum!
Transcript from video
The most important factor when it comes to creating a culture, where we’ve got high levels of engagement and high levels of well-being, which leads to high levels of retention, productivity, and innovation within the company, all things that businesses need today to thrive is being massively overlooked and that is looking after your managers. And Slack Technologies' future forum has just come out with some new data this year that's suggests
that manager burnout levels are at a record level high at forty-three or forty-five percent.
And this is just the managers that aren't being open about it. We know that people that talk about burnout only ten or two, openly talk about it. So think about this. Gallop has released a lot of data that suggests that If a manager is engaged in work, their teams, which tend to be an average of six to ten in the normal organisation, of three times more likely to be engaged in work. So if a manager is burning out and struggling, their teams are probably at least three times less likely to be engaged or thriving at work. So we tend to look at these symptoms, which are high levels of productivity throughout the organization, and high levels of sickness, which we know is associated with employee engagement. no knowledge of retention items, a turnover. We tend to look at all these problems and think, what do we need to do to address that? We need to put on well-being programs.
We need to pay people more, we need to improve flexible work in all things which I'm sure are good. But if your managers are burning out, none of this is gonna have a lasting or meaningful impact. And if you're managing and aren't burning out and are happy, that's probably gonna have more of an impact than any of those other things. So I believe that this has been overlooked massively, and I've seen the impact of doing this in organisations.
Another thing to consider is that between forty and eighty sorry, between sixty and eighty percent of managers don't receive any training or development.
And this is pretty much the crypt of the issue that I believe, that this is the crypt of the issue with our people's problems in the UK and our businesses because what happens in your organisation is you filter your best people into management positions. Of course, you do. You'd be sitting on too. you feel the people that work hard and got a good attitude and care about the company into a management position. Fantastic. But as soon as that person gets into a management position, what we're doing is you're saying to them the way that you've been working for the last three, five, ten years that's done you so well. I've got you great results and got you to hear.
We don't need to do that anymore. We want to completely change your approach to work. want you to focus less on working hard and more on working smart. We want you to be up to three strategic plans. We don't want you to keep saying yes to all the work, it's like you used to. we need you to be able to prioritise the work and say, no to things, which isn't gonna come naturally to you. And we need you to leverage a team and be smart with your time. And this is the exact opposite of what they've been doing to now up to now, they've been working really hard, saying yes to everything, doing things themselves, and being a team player, not having to lead, not having to address behavior, not having to inspire remote alert team, not having to plan or prioritise.
So you're putting them into a position where if you don't develop them, they are going to burn out. They're going to suffer. Unless they're very lucky and naturally take that management position, they're gonna carry on doing what's served them well because they're human beings, and that's going to lead to them feeling burnt out, taking on too much work, not engaging their team, and just generally getting fed up. So what I think the biggest problem is in most of our businesses in the UK and the wider world we funnel our best people into management positions We don't give them development training because we're too focused on firefights and other issues.
We let them burn out. They are the people that are leading people throughout the organisation. It creates a vicious toxic culture of manager burn out, the teams aren't happy, stuff's going wrong, and then our response is to try and pay people more to do more flexible work and put in crazy well-being programs, sign up for these new apps, do all of these different things that are just overlooking the major issue, which is your managers need some basic simple to do development training.
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Mike Jones Better Happy Founder
Mike founded Better Happy in 2018.
He now works with a variety of businesses ranging from small accountancies up to large organisations such as Travelodge on improving employee happiness. Mike's vision and the vision of Better Happy is 'Every employee happy, every business thriving'