Talking Internal Communication...

Absence, stress & depression in the workplace – line managers may hold the key

A recent study from NICE, the National Institute of Health & Clinical Excellence, caught my eye.  Reported on the Management Today website, it  suggests that poor line management is responsible for rising levels of stress in the workplace.

NICE reckons the total cost to the UK economy of work related stress, anxiety and depression is now a staggering £28bn - more than 14 million work days are lost every year due to these conditions.

It says that businesses can make their employees happier, reduce costs and boost productivity by following a few basic guidelines - like giving positive feedback, encouraging flexible working and giving days off as a reward.

And it’s not the only study to highlight this issue recently. Recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark found that 91% of employees are stressed at work - and worse still, seven in 10 are too scared to raise their concerns with their bosses. And back in the Spring a Finnish study concluded that poor team spirit at work can increase the chance of developing depression by more than half.

Now line managers clearly aren’t solely to blame for rising levels of stress and depression at work – the state of the economy doesn’t help - but their actions can play a big part in reducing or encouraging it. 

And it’s often the little things that make the biggest difference – like saying hello to team members in the morning, recognising and celebrating successes, communicating regularly as a team, listening, providing constructive performance feedback, ensuring employees are clear on what they need to do by when and promoting a sense of ‘esprit de corps’. These are all practical things that line managers can do to help create a healthy and happy workplace.

Again and again in study after study the pivotal role of line managers is underlined. They hold the key to so many aspects of organisational success and, in my mind, represent the frontline in the battle for hearts and minds – and health - in the workplace.

If they are not already, I believe internal communicators should be focusing the bulk of their time, resources and energy on enhancing the quality of line managers, equipping them with the right skills and information and directly engaging them. As my old boss used to say, happy people + happy customers = successful business – and the first part of that equation rests largely in the hands of line managers.

Lee Smith, Gatehouse

Face-to-face tops the channel charts

The resource site www.internalcommunications.co.uk recently closed its first online poll in which it asked visitors 'you're only allowed one comms channel, what would it be?'

The answer, surprise surprise, was that face-to-face - backed by 52 per cent of respondents. Intranet came in second at 27 per cent, with email in third spot at 12 per cent.  Print channels scored less well - magazines and newsletters were both rated just over 4 per cent each.

As this poll ended Personnel Today published this news story based on research by its sister publication Employment Review. It shows that team meetings are considered to be the most effective - and most popular - method for keeping staff informed. 

Much has been written about channel preferences over the years, but it's great to see that face-to-face continues to be viewed as the critical ingredient it is.  I still believe most organisations have a long way to go to make face-to-face as effective as it can be, but these findings are nevertheless welcome news.

L 

Is technology reducing our reliance on line managers?

Here's one to set the cat amongst the pigeons...

US blogger Bernie Charland, a senior communication strategist at PC manufacturer Dell, has challenged one of the sacred cows of internal comms by suggesting that developments in technology - RSS, wikis, social networking, video conferencing, intranets and so on - are reducing the importance of line manager communication. Check out his post here.

He is clearly playing devil's advocate, but his point is a good one and it's great to see someone challenging the conventional wisdom for a change.

Charland sets out his logic clearly, and on the face of it it's pretty compelling stuff.  I buy his argument that today many employees can access critical information much more easily, both inside and outside the organization. If they want to that is. Social media is, as we have discussed before, blurring the line between internal and external communication. This means that if they have the appetite stakeholders, whoever and wherever they are, can easily become much more knowledgeable.

The problem, as Charland rightly points out, is that use of these tools are in no way universal. Employees in hi tech and knowledge-based companies like Dell may well utilize the latest communication technologies, but they are still alien to the vast majority of workers (perhaps even more so here in Europe). Factories, call centers and the like are just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, I would argue that outside big business, most employers don't even have the basics in place yet (one of which is effective line manager comms).   

Charland acknowledges that managers are still important and I completely agree. For me, there will always be a need for line managers to have meaningful conversations with their people, to show they care about employees, to really listen, to provide context for corporate decisions, to motivate and to inspire. At its best Web 2.0 technology certainly enhances workplace communication, but, fan as I am, I honestly can't see it ever replacing traditional face-to-face comms.

That's my view, but I'd love to know what others think (and I'd really love to know what the likes of T J Larkin, Roger D'Aprix or Angela Sinickas - communicators who have done so much to underline the importance of line manager comms - have to say on the subject). 

Struggling managers need our help

Today I stumbled upon two interesting research studies, both published this week, which look at the attitudes and behaviours of managers. They contain some mixed signals, but overall paint a depressing picture of the state of management in the UK.

The first study, published by the Chartered Management Institute in the West Midlands, shows that many managers are not keeping up-to-date with current thinking, business trends or best practice. Only half of those surveyed believe they are fully using their skills at work, and nearly a third wished they had developed more skills during their career. In contrast, an impressive 62% claim to be energetic at work and 60% say they are willing to go the extra mile, though many of them blame bureaucracy (32%) and lack of resources (26%) for holding them back.

The second poll, from the Institute of Leadership and Management, shows that many young workers feel they are being held back by the behaviour of their boss. The survey quizzed 500 workers aged 18 to 24 and found a catalogue of complaints about line managers, including their dictatorial management style, frequent desire to blame others when things go wrong and expectation that staff will do what they’re told without debate or discussion. Many of those questioned said they were being put off becoming a manager because of this negative experience.

All this is yet more evidence that managers are struggling to cope with the demands placed on them. We expect them to be the superheroes of the workplace – to manage and motivate their team, to translate business strategy, to hire and fire, to meet health and safety targets, to defend company policy and so on. Yet we often recruit them based solely on their technical ability or the fact that they’re ‘due’ a promotion. Once promoted, we then expect them to somehow intuitively know how to be great communicators.  Is it any wonder that David Brent is alive and kicking in the UK workplace?!

There are some lessons here for internal communicators. This research shows, once again, why we need to treat managers as a specific and key audience segment. Managers desperately need our help and, as the CMI research shows, are keen to develop. We must make it our mission to improve management communication – to make line managers accountable for it, to coach them, to up-skill them, to help them communicate with their increasingly diverse teams (not least Generation Y), to clarify what we expect of them, to give them the information they need, to listen to them… If we engage managers and equip them with the knowledge and skills they need to engage their teams, then we will significantly improve the climate in the workplace and, with it, organisational performance.

Line managers back in the firing line

Line managers are back in the firing line.

Research published this week by Investors in People and YouGov suggests that poor communication by managers could be the main reason for employee dissatisfaction. Communication ability was listed as the most important managerial quality by respondents, yet nearly one in three (32%) said their manager was not good at communicating with them.

We all know how important line managers are to effective internal communication, yet standards remain woefully low. It's a truism that employees typically leave their boss, not their employer, and one of the main reasons for this is a breakdown in communication.

It's about time organisations began taking line manager comms seriously. Leaders need to wake up to the fact that most managers are not natural born communicators - just because someone has been promoted to a supervisory or team leadership role does not mean they know how to engage people, how to translate and interpret strategy, how to make performance data interesting and relevant, how to build dialogue, how to facilitate a team meeting, etc. These skills need to be learned like any other.