Enhancing Manager Effectiveness With Transparency, Technology, and Leadership Development

BY Jennifer Yoshikoshi | November 27, 2024

Creating transparency and trust within a company allows for employees to feel trust with managers, but how can companies measure management success and continue to improve their impact on employees? In an executive panel discussion, leaders at From Day One’s Austin conference spoke about “Manager Effectiveness: Defining It, Measuring It, and Improving It.”

“You have to really be able to be transparent. You have to be able to be authentic and be willing to not know all the answers and rely and trust your team to help you get things done,” said Patrick Felder, senior vice president of employee success at Salesforce.

Using AI as a Tool

“2024 is all about AI,” said Arun Serikar, vice president of digital human resources at Schneider Electric, who uses tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT in his role as a manager. Serikar says AI allows for more efficiency for meeting notes, scheduling and synthesizing information from meetings.

AI however functions off of available data which means that in order for the system to function effectively, you need to ensure that the system has the knowledge, articles and information before deploying it.

Ricardo Galan, vice president of diversity, inclusion and talent experience at QBE, says his company uses AI to train managers on skills such as how to facilitate difficult conversations. “Our HR department cannot go to every single leader and teach them how to have a difficult convocation, but AI can actually help you practice in a safe environment,” Galan said.

For companies with thousands of employees, it can be difficult to reach each person and give each of them the necessary training and workshops but implementing AI tools can help streamline these processes.

Companies like Salesforce overlook over 30,000 team members, many of which are based in India. Salesforce created its own AI virtual agent called Agentforce, a competitor to Microsoft Copilot. Within the company however, leaders use a separate tool called the manager 360 dashboard which allows them to access all of their team’s data, offers suggestions and provides summaries.

Panelists spoke about "Manager Effectiveness: Defining It, Measuring It, and Improving It," in a session moderated by Tom Miller, morning anchor at KXAN

“The idea is, to continue to build better leaders you have to give them all of the relevant information, make sure they understand all the component pieces and then bring that to them at their fingertips within the flow of work,” said Felder.

Growing and Developing Leaders

Leaders within a company don’t come out of thin air. Leaders like Jennifer Newbill, director of emerging talent at Dell Technologies, have to be able to spot future employees with potential in management and leadership.

At Dell, the company has implemented programs around the world where students can rotate throughout the company and learn about different aspects of departments. Throughout these programs, a student’s potential is being measured through observations on whether they exhibit the skills that match existing company values and leadership principles.

Haeli Harris, director of clinical operations at Nivati says empathy is also an important skill for leaders to have. “Empathy is a key piece in building trust,” she said.

Leaders are natural problem solvers but it’s also an important skill to be good at connecting with employees on a personal level and be able to see when behaviors change and notice when there might be something wrong, says Harris. “We want managers to be able to recognize when people are struggling, and the tools of ‘how do I help them, and how can I be a better manager,’” she said.

Training on emotional intelligence can improve relationships between managers and employees. One skill that managers can build is as simple as listening. “Sometimes people don’t want to sit and get advice. They want to be heard,” said Newbill.

Learning to become a leader comes with experience and development and hosting workshops can be helpful in boosting the growth of current and potential managers. Salesforce uses a manager training program called Lead India, which aims for the growth of leadership in employees based in India.

Over the last few years, Salesforce has expanded their leadership team in India to now over 900 leaders this year, says Felder. With this expansion, Lead India also had to adapt. The training program this year embedded wellness conversations, Indian luminaries to spark inspiration and focused conversations led by leaders.

Felder adds that when hiring for a company, leaders should be hiring those who are better than themselves to build a strong team that will carry the company forward. “You really have to be open and make sure that you’re holding folks accountable to hiring better than who they are, because the talent that you need is out there, but leaders sometimes want to hire like themselves, and you've got to push people a little bit harder to think differently about that,” said Felder.

Keeping Teams Connected Remotely

As many companies are now allowing employees to work remotely or hybrid, it can be difficult to maintain the connection between your team compared to an everyday in-person setting. Serikar emphasizes that open communication platforms like Slack or Yammer, now Viva Engage, can be helpful in connecting with employees remotely.

Felder, who uses Slack, said he will take videos with recaps of conferences and events to share to his team working offsite. Salesforce also utilizes multiple Slack channels where different teams and groups can connect with each other and maintain communication. Managers can build trust with their employees by opening themselves up to feedback and following up with what is shared.

Jennifer Yoshikoshi is a local news and education reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Evolving a Strong Set of Cultural Values for a Remote Workforce

Pop quiz: What U.S. city currently has the most remote workers? That would be Austin, Texas, with a whopping 24.9% of its workers operating outside of a traditional office environment. Carmen Amara, chief people officer at Yelp, is one of them.While many companies have ordered their employees back to the workplace, others have remained committed to flexibility. During a fireside chat at From Day One’s Austin conference, Amara showed how Yelp develops its remote culture with three elements in mind: What are employees saying about it? What are the business results? And what is the pace of innovation? Plus: How to keep career development at the forefront in a distributed workplace.Responding to the Desire for Remote WorkEven among growing public discourse about the need to return to the office, many workplaces are still noticing a strong desire among employees to stay home post-pandemic. “We are a remote work culture now,” said moderator Ross McCammon, deputy editor at Texas Monthly. “17.9% of workers are remote, a full three times as much remote work as there was before the pandemic.” And Yelp is no exception.“In 2021 we said we were going to be ‘remote first.’ We opened up our office doors and employees voted with their feet. On any given day, we had less than 1% of our employees showing up in an office,” Amara said. Recognizing that remote work was, in fact, working, Yelp went fully remote in 2022.The job market today is different than it was in 2022, when there was heavy competition to attract the top talent and the Great Resignation was in full swing. Now, Amara says, “companies are hiring more selectively” and tenure is lengthening, which means productivity is up, but organizations must work harder to keep longer term employees engaged. We’ve gone from the Great Resignation to what McCammon calls “The Big Stay.”An Intentional Approach to Culture-buildingOne of the biggest concerns facing employers today: Can you create culture in a remote environment? “Yes, you can, but you have to do so with intention,” Amara said. “And it’s not the same playbook, you can’t translate what you were doing in an office environment and just do that at home.” Yelp does it by relying on its longstanding core set of values. “Culture is about the stories that we tell and the values we hold high. That has to be foundational. You have to live by your values. You have to show your values in action. You have to address breaches in your values. And leaders have to walk the talk,” she said.Yelp creates experiences for employees that allow them to feel the organization’s values in their daily work. It’s taken its formerly San Francisco-based employee resource groups global, so all employees can join in the conversations from wherever they are. It also holds awards opportunities tied to the values and select in-person and virtual community service events in cities where there happen to be a lot of what Amara affectionately calls “Yelpers.”Carmen Amara, chief people officer of Yelp, was interviewed during the fireside chatYelp has developed both structured and unstructured storytelling sessions tied to its corporate values and professional development initiatives. Amara herself recently recorded one about authenticity. Leaders and employees at all levels are invited to take part. Sessions are presented live, recorded, and then sent out for later viewing.Re-envisioning the Employee ExperienceAmara says Yelp has relied on employee listening to inform a lot of its actions during and after the pandemic. “We did more specific and targeted surveys and interactions with employees to learn from them, so that we could quickly create the new playbook,” she said, noting that the organization was even more willing to move quickly and learn on the fly while refining the employee experience, rather than waiting for it to be “fully baked” before launch.What came out of the listening sessions was a strong desire for flexibility and the benefits that can help support it–caregiver benefits, mental health benefits, and flexible health and wellness benefits, including a stipend that can be put toward gym memberships, acupuncture, fitness gear, or the like. “It’s about creating a person-first experience,” Amara said.Amara acknowledges that as an HR professional, it can be hard to capture employees’ attention when rolling out cultural changes and benefits opportunities. 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Katie Chambers | November 26, 2024

Guiding Employee Growth With Inclusive Pathways to Success

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Carrie Snider | November 25, 2024

Redefining Well-Being in Today’s Workplace

What does well-being mean to you? The standard six pillars of well-being are emotional, physical, financial, social, intellectual, and spiritual. Each one complements and impacts the other, and the most forward-thinking companies are careful to include each in their employee benefits package.Traditionally, employers viewed well-being through the lens of physical health and its impact on productivity. Today, the scope has widened, encompassing mental health, financial security, and social connections, in the context of hybrid and remote work as well as in-office. As this thinking evolves, how are leaders assessing the points where employers can be most effective–and how are they aligning those needs with new solutions? 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Being as flexible as possible is a good [idea],” Bondan said.“The role of the HR business partner is changing,” Beauvais added, so that it’s less about enforcing rules and more about providing support and care so employees can stay healthy and productive. “Being a part of their world and understanding what they’re going through, so that they do lean on you in those moments that they wouldn't normally reach out to you, is really important,” she said.Understanding Your Role in the ProcessUltimately, you must remember that as HR you are in a people-first business. “One of my favorite sayings is, ‘We’re human resources. Human is our first name. Resources is our last name.’ Our customers are our resources, and we’re responsible for the human side of our business. So, we add value when we do that,” Knobbe said. “And ROI–it’s both ‘return on investment’ and ‘return on individual.’ If you can get your programs and your communications right, people feel like it's about them, not just about whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish.”Jackson shares there are three layers of well-being benefits: organization, interpersonal, and individual. For years, HR was mostly just focused on the individual, emphasizing personal resilience and being reactive to problems after they occur. In today’s workplace, that’s no longer enough.“What’s your responsibility as an employer? The organizational layer is all about how you want to talk about mental health. How do you want to talk about culture? How do you want to talk about well-being? How do you set the right tone for the rest of the organization?” Jackson said.The structural elements should be supporting your company values, be it mental health benefits, fertility benefits, parental leave or more. And manager training should incorporate these values, teaching how to be “empathetic leaders that create mentally healthy environments,” Jackson said. “If you are intentional and look across how you run your organization from a well-being, benefits, and culture perspective, and assess at each of those three levels, that’s a good starting place to think about what you need to do to create that mentally healthy environment.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | November 25, 2024