Bringing policies to life: the vital role of front line managers in people management

A summary of the CIPD Executive Briefing

The research highlighted a significant correlation between the 'relationship with FLM' (front-line management) and employee attitudes - including commitment, motivation and job satisfaction. Bringing Policies to Life draws on the data generated during the study to explore the issue in greater depth. It offers insights into the design and development of the front-line manager role. The higher the employees rated their FLM in terms of the way they managed people, the more satisfied and committed they were. This in turn resulted in higher performance.

The report builds on earlier CIPD research into people and performance. Understanding the People and Performance Link: Unlocking the black box identified a number of issues as being particularly important to the relationship between how people are managed and the performance of the business. Evidence was provided to show that organisational success is dependent on having the right mix of HR policies in place. The AMO model (ability, motivation and opportunity) supports the theory that business success is based on the capacity of organisations:

• to recruit people with the right ability
• to motivate them
• to provide them with the opportunities to use their skills in well-designed jobs.

Who is on the front line?

Front-line managers are defined as managers who have first-line responsibility for a work group of approximately 10 to 25 people. They are accountable to a higher level of management and are placed in the lower layers of the management hierarchy, normally at the first level.

Roles and responsibilities

The role typically includes a combination of:

• people management
• managing operational costs
• providing technical expertise
• organising, such as planning work allocation and rotas
• monitoring work processes
• checking quality
• dealing with customers/clients
• measuring operational performance.

Why are FLMs important?

The research discovered that front-line leaders are often crucial in making the difference between low-performing and high-performing firms. Occupying a key position in the organisation, they are the deliverers of success by implementing strategies that focus the efforts of individuals on business goals and translating them into positive outcomes.

Team leadership is an important aspect of motivating and managing people in all the organisations studied and requires the use of what are sometimes called 'soft' skills - for example, communication, involving, listening, asking and problem-solving. FLMs often have to implement policies such as appraisal or team briefing and have a major role to play in bringing these policies 'to life'.

Leadership is important in influencing employees' attitudes towards the organisation and their job, and FLM behaviour is the most important factor in explaining the variation in both job satisfaction and job discretion ie the choice people have over how they do their jobs. It's also one of the more critical factors in developing organisational commitment.

What about managing FLMs?

But there's also a clear gap between formal policy statements and practice - the rhetoric-reality gap. This demonstrates the impact FLMs can have on the outcome of policies. The way they themselves are managed and developed is therefore crucial in influencing their discretionary behaviour ie the extent to which they are prepared, positively or negatively, to invest effort in their role.

The policies that are most supportive of line managers are:

• ensuring good working relationships with their managers
• providing career opportunities
• working to support their work-life balance
• allowing them to participate and feel involved in decisions
• having an open organisational culture that allows them to raise grievances or discuss matters of personal concern
• giving them a sense of job security.

Research methodology

The research findings are based on interviews with over 1,000 employees. The project focused on 12 organisations and in each case a unit of analysis was selected (for example, a sales force or a department store). In each unit, detailed face-to-face interviews were carried out and repeated 12 months later.

The organisations surveyed were:

Conclusion

The research found that more and more front-line leaders are active at the delivery end of people management, involved in tasks such as performance appraisal, coaching and development, involvement and communication, absence management, discipline and grievances, and recruitment and selection. Consequently, the way that related policies and practices, designed by HR professionals, are used and interpreted, identified in the report as 'organisation process advantage', has become an important determinant of the success or failure of those practices.

This is a summary of the CIPD executive briefing, Bringing Policies to Life: the Role of front line managers by Sue Hutchinson and John Purcell. For further details visit the CIPD bookstore.

• Go to the CIPD Bookstore

Contact details

• Contact us if you would like to discuss the research on which these findings are based.