By Ryan Fuller & Nina Shikaloff
Microsoft’s Workplace Analytics product analyzes metadata from a customer’s millions of e-mail and meeting interactions to generate a set of key performance indicators for managers.
We recently combined behavioral KPIs with employee engagement survey results for two Fortune 100 clients to find out which day-to-day qualities distinguish managers of highly engaged employees. The results were illuminating:
- They lead by example in terms of working hours. Not surprisingly, managers who work long hours end up with employees who work longer too. But the engagement scores of those employees are 5 percent higher than their shorter-hours colleagues. People are more engaged if their manager works at least as much as they do.
- They allocate work evenly. Employees who put in more hours than the rest of their team are more likely to be disengaged. While in some cases employees may volunteer to take on extra work on their own, a manager’s core function is to allocate work evenly across his team.
- They maintain large internal networks. Employees who work for a manager with a relatively large internal network have engagement scores up to 5 percent higher. Also, these employees had networks up to 85 percent larger than their peers working for less-connected managers.
- They value one-on-one meetings. In the companies we analyzed, the average manager spent 30 minutes every three weeks with each of his employees. Employees who got little or no private time with their manager were likelier to be disengaged.
- They’re engaged at work. The disengagement rate of employees working for disengaged managers is up to twice as high as for those working for engaged managers. Managers have a disproportionate impact on employee engagement scores. If companies are serious about improving employee engagement, they would do well to begin with their managers.
Ryan Fuller leads an organizational analytics unit at Microsoft. Nina Shikaloff is a senior program manager at Microsoft.