70% leave job because of line manager's performance

70% of people leave their job because of the line manager, not the job itself – that was the message of Professional Performance Consultant Teresa Mitrovic, at yesterday’s HR Game Changer Conference.

Also speaking at the event held by myHRcareers, Deepak Jas, BBC’s Head of HR, stated that line managers hold the overall responsibility for engagement and performance, adding that the workplace has changed so much in the last 5-10 years, that what is being asked of line managers is ‘significantly different’ from a decade ago.

“It’s not just HR that’s making demands of line managers,” he explained. “Certainly at the BBC we’re asking managers to take on additional responsibilities that Finance are no longer undertaking, Procurement are asking them to do certain things, and we in HR are also asking certain things of our line manager population.

Jas explained that everything that line managers do, from the way they greet their team in the morning, through to the way they conduct a performance discussion, who they reward, who they remunerate, who gets promoted – all the way through to who they exit – gives very clear symbols to teams about what’s important and what’s not.

“My own theory is that the gap between leadership and management is eroding. I think we expect our managers to be leaders these days as well, and that means managers of the future are going to have to take on the role of ‘magnet’,” he said.

“You can have a great logo, you can have a slick recruitment process, but it’s your manager that really carries your brand and brings talent into your organisation.”
Jas concluded that successful management has seen a shift from IQ to EQ – emotional intelligence.

“It’s about managing your own emotions and being aware of your own emotions, but conversely being very aware of the emotions that you see in others and responding accordingly. The best line managers in our organisation at the BBC have high EQ scores and so what I believe is that EQ will become an attribute that we will measure more so in the future.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user Sadie Hernandez