What is a manager’s role in developing their teams?
Managers are task busy; there is no doubt about that! Not only are they responsible for overseeing their departments, team members, targets, budgets, scaling up, (or down), advocating on behalf of their teams for resource allocation and conflict resolution. But should they also be expected to have a role in training their employees?
For those of you who work in organisations that have a training department, are you thinking to yourselves, isn’t that the role of the training team? Is it, though?
Let’s take a quick step back to reflect on an interesting statistic: Gallup’s ‘State of the Global Workforce’ report is an exhaustive breakdown of data accrued from employees across 155 countries. Researchers found that, globally, just 15%, or slightly over a sixth, of workers were actively engaged in their jobs.
This figure varies considerably across countries and regions but never exceeds 40%. The cost to the global economy in lost productivity? An estimated at $7 trillion annually say the experts at Gallup.
This is huge! Disengaged employees drain valuable resources while contributing very little to the company’s goals. The reality is that no company can afford to have 85% of their employees disengaged. Keeping engagement up is one of the managers’ responsibilities to employees and the business. To do this, organisations need to provide managers with the tools to improve employee engagement on all levels. Training is one of the most effective of these tools.
Involving Managers When You Train Employees
Many companies hire professional trainers to tackle employee learning and development, despite training being a core management responsibility. The problem with cutting managers out of the training process is threefold.
- Their insights about the employees on their team remain untapped.
- Managers can’t fully leverage training benefits when they don’t have input into which skills will be the focus of development or how and when the development will occur.
- Involving managers in the development process creates ownership for the manager, to actively follow up and assist in the embedding of newly learnt skills and apply them back into day to day work.
Ensuring active post-training support is crucial to achieving embedded behavioral change and performance improvement.
People Managers can help bridge that gap. “Managers play a critical role in the transfer of training from textbook to tasks on the job,” says Colleen Condon, Chief Learning Officer, from Facilitated Training. She describes three distinct phases during which this takes place:
- Pre-training: Managers set personal learning objectives with employees.
- What benefits and outcomes are expected with employees’ performance on the job? Will they be able to take on more challenging assignments?
2. During training: Manager support team members learning, by showing interest and support.
- Where applicable, managers should also participate in training, share insights and relevant case studies and examples.
3. Post-training: After the training has been completed, managers can ask employees to create a plan for how they will apply what they’ve learned to their jobs.
- What will be different?
- What is the timeline for seeing change?
- What help or assistance does the team member require to implement these skills?
Overall, the manager’s role is not generally necessary to conduct the actual training but rather to facilitate the training on behalf of his or her team. If you are a manager, you shouldn’t assume that “someone else” is going to ensure the necessary training happens.
“Managers need to roll up their sleeves and take ownership, by engaging and working with direct reports, setting training objectives, securing the resources needed to provide the training and development opportunities for their employees and then helping employees see the value of both incremental and step-function improvements in their abilities,” says Colleen Condon.
Reinforcing the Importance of Training
Many employees treat training as a grudging obligation; something mandated by HR or by the mythical upper management team, that they need to get out of the way so they can get back to their day jobs. Others treat training as truly valuable and a means for meaningful development and advancement. As a leader, the manager has a key role in determining which attitude employees develop. Ask yourself; What behavior are you modelling?
“A positive learning culture starts from the top down—a manager’s attitude towards learning will trickle down to their employees, so if they are disengaged with the training policy, other employees will be too,” says Colleen, “The organization needs to ensure that all managers understand the importance of training and up skilling their staff, as well as understand how and why training needs to properly align with the company’s objectives.” Certainly, the Learning and Development team also need to truly partner with the business, to ensure that the content and solutions that they are providing are relevant. It’s easy to blame HR and the training department for ineffectual training, but often the critical element to success is missing. The role of the manager.
Five ways a manager can actively improve employee training
Given managers’ influence on employee engagement, it’s essential that they feel empowered to improve employee training. Let’s take a closer look at 5 practical ways for managers to support employee development, and ultimately improve employee engagement.
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Set the example and foster a learning culture
A manager’s role in training and development is essential because they spend significant time with employees. Managers can use simple daily interactions to show employees that training is a priority. This can be as simple as having team members share insights from the latest white paper on their industry in a team meeting. This role can be shared among the team, enabling each team member to research and present to their peers. The manager should ensure that they communicate this a learning and professional development, after all, not all development occurs in the classroom.
This constant interaction between manager and employee can be leveraged to improve training by consciously fostering a learning culture within the organization. An effective learning culture starts from the top, and is cascaded throughout all levels of the organisation.
Elements for successful learning culture.
Development programs can also take advantage of managers’ daily interaction with employees by incorporating managers into structured post-training activities. These can range from on-the-job assessments, competency assessments to encouragement when employees find changes challenging to implement and maintain.
2. Offer a more in-depth insight into employees
When designing a training program, many start by consulting subject matter experts. Why not include managers in the process too? One of the managers’ responsibilities towards employees is to ensure that they’re able to meet the requirements of their current job, and are prepared for upcoming changes faced by the organisation and industry.
3. Communicate the value of employee development
Even if your organization has a strong learning culture, it’s still essential to make it clear that employee training and development is a top priority. A manager’s role in training and development includes communicating (both through words and action) that the company values their employees’ growth.
The first step to valuing employee development is to make enough time for it. So when you train employees, give them the time they need to participate in training activities fully and complete assessments. For some teams, this may mean rostering time for review and completion of learning activities. By planning and rostering for this – it sends a clear message, that it is essential and is expected to be completed.
Managers should also take care to recognize employee improvement both during training and on-the-job. This will help employees feel appreciated and motivated to keep growing. This can be achieved by linking the training back to team goals, company objectives or individuals development plans. Don’t assume that your team members will join the dots as to why they are completing the training.
4. Create opportunities for on-the-job practice
New skills and knowledge gained during training won’t stick if learners don’t get a chance to apply them in the workplace. In other words, companies run the risk of wasting a significant portion of their training investment if employees aren’t allowed to practice.
Managers should collaborate with trainers to provide employees with opportunities to practice what they’ve learned in “safe to fail” spaces, like role-plays with colleagues, or eLearning scenarios and secondments.
When managers witness new skills being used, provide positive feedback in the moment, recognizing the learning.
Finally, managers can provide hands-on supervision when employees apply trickier new skills in the workplace or allow employees to complete a new task with them.
5. Set training and performance goals
Stephen Covey, said “Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.” A vital part of a manager’s role in training and development is to support their team in setting meaningful and achievable goals and plotting out the road to achieve them. Take the opportunity to set these during performance appraisals, and revise at an agreed time frame. This keeps you and your employee accountable.
Training goals should relate to job-specific skills. But they should also relate to broader professional development activities that help employees advance within the organization and realize their career ambitions. Managers have the privilege of working closely with employees to identify the knowledge and skills they’ll need for these goals in the short term and the long run.
Setting measurable KPIs is always advised, too. The cliché that what is measured can be achieved is worth taking seriously. Managers should work together with employees to establish areas for development, and find ways to quantify their goals. For example, a new sales employee may need to aim for 20% more sales per quarter after training is complete. If you want to learn more about setting kpi’s for learning check out this article.
The manager’s role in training also extends to communicating training expectations to their team. All employees should know how their participation in training will affect their performance reviews and advancement opportunities.
Be sure to check in with the trainer. You should ascertain if there are any areas that your team member requires further assistance. An excellent place to start is to ask for a copy of the evaluation forms that are completed post training, along with a summary of recommendations from the trainer. This assists in keeping yourself and the trainer accountable to actions. Use the report as a place to start coaching. Even better, share the results of the report from the training team, so they know something that the forms are utilized for productive purposes.
Don’t Overlook Your Best Training Assets
When managers are intimately involved in training, employees are more likely to be engaged, too. They’ll feel that their development is valued and that their manager supports their growth. That’s why engaged employees and relevant, effective training quickly translate to improved ROI, productivity, and overall employee satisfaction.
Learning and Development teams are a conduit to the success of the organisation, and ensuring the learning programs focus on the capabilities that are required now and in the future for the organisation to be successful.
The role of the people manager is essential in developing their team. Even more so, in environments where there isn’t a training team to assist.
People managers are responsible for ensuring that they own the ongoing development of their teams.
- They schedule time for targeted development for themselves and their teams
- Managers follow up, encourage and coach their team members to embed new knowledge and skills.
- Managers collaborate with Learning subject matter experts to ensure that examples, scenarios and technical examples are relevant.
- Managers demonstrate the importance of ongoing learning by modelling behaviours such as coaching others, attending training, follow up team member learning plans.
What are your experiences? Is your manager actively engaged with your development? Let us know in the comments below.
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About the author: Colleen Condon
Colleen likes to keep things creative in all that she does, often using marshmallows as a source of inspiration.
Everyone knows that ongoing learning is essential for both personal and professional success and yet, for many, this means hours of attending dead boring training or completing’ losing the will to live’ eLearning modules. Colleen’s mission is to end tedious professional development while ensuring targeted outcomes for learners and businesses.
Colleen has honed her skills over the last 20 years across multiple industries and locations. Her previous role saw her overseeing the training and development needs of over 60, 000 employees across 13 countries in the APAC region. This enabled honing skills that celebrated diversity and understanding human commonality through learning, and that in the absence of a common language, flip charts and coloured markers can overcome most challenging situations.
In 2019, Colleen founded her own business, Facilitated Training, harnessing her global learning experiences and sharing them through ready to use learning resources, specialising in leadership, mentoring, guest speaking, creative problem solving, filling the gap of high quality, customisable training resources and tools.