CANADIAN ORGANIZATIONS SHOULD
FOCUS ON MIDDLE MANAGERS TO DRIVE
EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Organizations often focus on driving engagement for the broad
employee population. However, a new Conference Board of
Canada report finds that focusing on managers as a distinct group
of employees can drive higher engagement overall.
The report, Employee Engagement: Driving Engagement From
the Middle, shows that as middle manager engagement scores
improve, so do the scores of their employees. In fact, employees
who work for engaged managers are 59 per cent more likely to be
engaged compared to those supervised by disengaged managers.
“An organization cannot have engaged employees if man-agers
are not actively engaged themselves. The more engaged
managers are, the more time and effort they will likely spend
on engaging their teams,” said Colin Hall, associate director,
Organizational Performance, The Conference Board of Canada.
“Middle managers’ engagement is often overlooked, and organi-zations
may be missing out on an opportunity to optimize their
engagement strategies.”
Employee engagement varies depending on the employee func-tion,
role and level of responsibility. The highest-ranking employees
or senior leaders are at the top engagement level, followed by
middle managers and then individual employees. Disengaged
middle managers are three times more likely to have disengaged
employees, who in turn, are four times as likely to consider leav-ing
their jobs. Despite the important role middle managers play in
employee engagement, only one-third of Canadian middle manag-ers
are highly engaged.
Confidence in senior leadership is the most influential fac-tor
in determining engagement for both managers and workers.
Trust in senior leadership and communication regarding organi-zational
objectives are key drivers in improving the engagement of
managers and workers. Addressing gaps in engagement between
senior leaders and middle managers in areas such as ensuring
co-operation, confidence that leaders can achieve goals, alignment
in the vision for the organization, taking pride in their contribu-tions
and success of their organizations can help boost middle
managers engagement.
MAJORITY OF CANADIAN CFOS FEEL
UNPREPARED TO CHAMPION AI TECHNOLOGY IN
THEIR ORGANIZATION
In a poll of close to 100 top Canadian CFOs and audit chairs,
global executive search firm Odgers Berndtson and the Institute of
Corporate Directors found that AI is one of the emerging trends
requiring businesses to rethink their business strategy – yet adop-tion
among Canadian organizations remains at an all-time low.
As the mandate of the CFO evolves to include responsibilities far
beyond traditional finance, CFOs are increasingly being called to
play a strategic role in overseeing or closely supporting the adoption
and implementation of key transformation initiatives such as AI.
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10 ❚ NOVEMBER 2018 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL
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