How to activate managers

Are you an HR specialist struggling to activate your managers to improve overall employee performance and company culture?

We encounter this problem with customers across numerous industries, from hospitality to office-based organisations. Getting the most out of your managers, who are often in the position reluctantly, can be difficult. That’s why we’ve created this easy-to-understand article that outlines how Mo’s platform can activate your managers for real results.

Great Management Is the Key to Team Success

Research shows that managers dictate the effectiveness of an HR initiative, accounting for 70% of the variance in employee engagement.

It is essential to activate your management team to create real cultural change in your organisation. For example, if you invest in recognition software but see low uptake, it might be down to management apathy. Unless you “activate” your managers on initiatives, you’re unlikely to see results. Managers are the difference between a highly engaged team and a poor performance.

Better engagement is the secret to improved productivity and lower attrition rates and our platform is expertly designed to improve these metrics in as little as six months.

What Does “Activating Managers” Mean?

Activating your managers is a simple concept that was once complicated to achieve. “Activation” means optimising your management’s performance to achieve company goals. Sound straightforward? With the right tools, it can be.

Before we explain the solution, let’s examine a hard truth: One bad manager can be enough to disrupt positive company culture. The data indicates that 82% of managers end up in the position “accidentally”, while one in four employees have left a job because of a negative relationship with their manager.

In summary, if most managers are struggling, activating their potential will significantly improve employee performance and engagement across your company.

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How Can Mo Activate My Managers?

Our award-winning platform is designed to help busy managers engage their teams. It doesn’t matter if your people are in-office, hybrid or remote. Mo uses a centralised feed and automated prompts called Boosts to engage employees without adding to the manager’s workload.

Here’s an example of how that could work:

While we don’t know your unique management structure, let’s assume your organisation uses a standard “Head of Department” and “Line Manager” hierarchy.

🚀 If we work together in the future, our Customer Success team will work with you to create a tailored plan for your employee structures.

The first step to activating managers is to make sure that your departmental leaders are role-modelling the behaviour you want to cultivate.

  • Are your managers posting regularly about their team wins?
  • Are they visibly giving positive feedback and recognition?
  • Do they make their team feel valued beyond business metrics?

Make posting on Mo part of managers’ performance metrics. Give them a budget to distribute awards for “teamwork” or “selflessness”. Ask them to present on the topic of your company values. If their team can see that they take these things seriously, employees are more likely to respond with their positive behaviour.

How Can I Change My Management Culture?

If these questions have raised a red flag, you should consider targeted management training. As part of our onboarding process, we offer this as standard — you can add more management or leadership training to your package throughout your journey with Mo.

Methods we use include:

  1. Manager-to-peer recognition
  2. Peer-to-peer recognition
  3. Nominations and awards
  4. Feedback loops
  5. Behavioural prompts
  6. Codifying values

We turn your disconnected employees into engaged teams.

Learn more about our proven strategies

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement drives high performance.

Employee recognition solutions

Employee Recognition

Employee Recognition improves team connection.

Staff Rewards

Staff rewards and recognition drive performance.

Mo Unlocks Your Management Potential

Mo is a culture and engagement platform that uses data insights to drive real improvement in engagement scores while reducing staff turnover. We strategically help people teams create great places to work through continuous, positive action.

Mo works especially well with distributed teams. We have numerous case studies to prove that our strategy works for companies like yours.

Written by Alice Florence Orr

All Articles by Alice Florence Orr