If your small business is growing at a strong clip, you might be ready to promote one of your employees to a managerial role so you can start spreading out some of your heavy workload.
But hiring an effective manager can be a daunting task. Mark Allen, a business management professor at Pepperdine University, spoke of the perils of hiring unprepared managers during a session at the HCI Human Capital Summit, according to told BenefitsPro, a site for professionals.
"A big mistake we all have is we promote people to be managers because they're really good at whatever job they had before," Allen said. "So what you're doing is taking away a top performer away from a job they're really good and giving them a new job they're not good at, and then they become a (subpar) manager."
One of the biggest obstacles business owners face is creating a management team that is properly tailored for the position, and finding talented managers can be a difficult process, Allen said.
Managers with a limited amount of managerial talent are twice as likely to not be engaged in the workplace as mangers who are deemed to have high managerial talent, according to a recent Gallup poll.
But what constitutes a high amount of talent? Gallup stated most people have talent in a few different areas, but only about 10 percent of people have the proper mixture of attributes to be excellent managers. Those qualities include assertiveness, decision-making abilities, being able to provide motivation, holding people accountable and crafting relationships.
Gallup reported 20 percent of people have talent, which encompasses some of these characteristics but not all. However, just 18 percent of current managers have high talent, meaning that small businesses and large corporations alike are largely missing out on finding the right manager for the job.
Managers and workforce engagement
Employees become much more engaged in the workplace under a strong managerial team. Passionate employee engagement means a company can rely on workers that care about the business on levels other than monetary gain. And when employees are actively engaged in the workplace, they tend to do a better job and are less likely to leave for other opportunities.
Managers with high levels of talent prompt higher productivity and employee retention rates. They also lead to better profits, Gallop reported. High talent managers garner 48 percent high profitability than other managers. This is likely due to a more cohesive workforce that can rally around a strong-minded manager.
Engaging employees
Whether you're managing a company by yourself or have the means to hire a manager, it's important for the person leading the workforce to make business investments in each and every worker.
Managers who have some type of daily communication with workers - whether it be over the phone, through email or face to face - tend to be the best at engaging employees, according to the Harvard Business Review.
Managers should always try to return calls or messages from their team within a 24-hour span, The Review said. This builds a strong work rapport, and employees will be more likely to share details about their personal life, which can keep them engaged. Employees who felt their manager cared about them as people were much more likely to be engaged in the office, Gallup said.
Engaged employees are also more likely to know their role and what their work priorities should be on a weekly basis.
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