The Myths
Most employees dislike their immediate managers; it is the immediate manager
that is the cause of most employee morale problems
The Findings
It is very often asserted that when there are employee morale problems,
the fault lies in first-level supervision. It makes sense intuitively to target those
managers because they are in direct contact with the workers and might be relatively
inexperienced in management. Yes, they are a big influence, but usually for the better!
The surveys reported in
The Enthusiastic
Employee demonstrate that, on the whole,
immediate managers are among the highest rated elements of the employee's work
environment. The surveys show that 78 percent of employees are positive toward their
managers' technical skills (knowing the job). Although the rating on their humanrelations
skills is lower (66 percent), it is still much higher than the ratings obtained on issues
such as bureaucracy. In almost all companies, only about 10 percent of managers receive
ratings that can be described as unfavorable. That 10 percent can do much harm and
require attention, but, by and large, first-line managers are bulwarks of organizations,
even of those organizations that otherwise might be dysfunctional almost to the point of collapse.
Therefore, intuition fails here and improvement steps, to the extent that they target the first level, are often misplaced. The major problems, as seen by employees, are usually in the "middle" (below senior management and the organization as a whole and above the immediate manager and immediate work environment). The "middle" is where coordination and control among the parts of the organization take place. When employees complain about "bureaucracy," they don't usually see the villain as their own boss or the CEO, but rather middle management and staff departments, such as Finance. When they complain about a lack of cooperation, they most often see the problem stemming from departments other than their own and not being dealt with -- in fact, sometimes magnified -- by the middle managers to whom their and those other departments report. A complaint about disorganization is usually directed at inefficient work processes that cut across departments, such as the way staff groups and the line don't communicate or coordinate well with each other.
Back to The Enthusiastic Employee
