What’s the difference between an engaged employee and one that’s ready to quit? In most cases, it’s their manager. In fact, effective managers are 2.2x more likely to retain top talent over the course of a single year.
But bad managers have an outsized impact, too: the cost of a single bad manager, based on internal Humu customer data, is $70,000. And that number grows quickly when it’s compounded over hundreds, or even thousands, of managers across an organization. We found, however, that teams with effective managers have 22% higher employee engagement.
In our work with Fortune 500 organizations, we’ve seen over and over again that managers make the difference between organizations that fail and those that succeed. Without great managers, even the best strategies fail to inspire employee action. Yet managers lack the support and resources they need to effectively lead their teams.
That’s why we’re excited to release Humu Coach for Managers: a suite of features that aims to make the day-to-day job of managing a team easier. When managers feel supported, their teams feel supported, which makes it possible for your organization to accomplish its most ambitious goals.
The first features we’re releasing focus on the key moments that managers must get right, from onboarding to 1:1 meetings to work anniversaries. By emphasizing these crucial moments, managers can build meaningful relationships with their team and move big initiatives forward, faster.
Smart Agendas: Lead better 1:1s
Most 1:1 meetings are a waste of time—or at least, time that could be managed more efficiently. Faced with overwhelmed managers, it’s no wonder that 33% of individual contributors dread their regular 1:1s.
Humu’s Smart Agendas help by offering managers timely reminders to prepare for upcoming 1:1s, making sure there’s never an empty agenda. Our proprietary research shows that when direct reports have effective, frequent 1:1s, they are more successful at their jobs, more innovative, and more likely to stay in their roles.
In addition, Humu empowers managers and employees to create a personalized agenda that prioritizes the topics that are most important. Humu's Smart Agendas intelligently recommends topics based on organization-wide initiatives, role-specific growth opportunities, and employee-selected focus areas. By automatically surfacing these important topics, Humu nudges managers, and their reports, towards more meaningful 1:1s.
Managers can also track what has been discussed to ensure that the right topics are addressed over time. With conversation tracking, managers can fine-tune how they support each employee. For example, a manager may add “career development” to their discussion topics after Humu’s Smart Agenda informs them it hasn’t been discussed in a while.
Team Insights: Coach more effectively
Employees whose managers regularly give them growth opportunities are 3.6x more likely to feel motivated by their work. But since managers can’t read minds, it’s nearly impossible for them to offer each individual the right support, at the right time. In reality, managers don’t have the time to coach each employee towards their unique long-term goals, since they are already at—and often over—capacity overseeing their team’s weekly work.
With Team Focus Areas, managers can easily see real-time data about what the team wants to focus on and what habits each individual aims to build. Based on their team’s Focus Areas, managers receive Coaching Guides to help them lead their team towards building the behaviors they care about—or need to improve on—most.
Beyond knowing what an employee wants to work on, effective managers know how to motivate individuals in their day-to-day work. Humu’s Work Style Assessment helps managers pinpoint how each report uniquely approaches their work, handles conflict, tackles tasks, and collaborates with colleagues.
On a more human level, Employee Profiles empower managers to remember the little details that make a big difference to employees. By making the small, yet valuable insights—such as the name of a report’s pet, or what hobbies they enjoy—easily accessible, even the busiest managers can make their employees feel seen. Effective managers create 78% more psychological safety on their teams, and that can start with remembering personal details.
Workflows (coming soon): Make every management moment easier, today and tomorrow
Research shows that pivotal workplace moments—such as onboarding and work anniversaries—make-or-break the entire employee experience. Unfortunately, staying on top of these repetitive processes can feel like busywork for managers.
That’s where Workflows can help. For example, the first few weeks of a new job are crucial for new hires: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But it’s easy for seasoned employees to forget what newbies need to know most. Automated workflows, coming later this fall, can help managers effortlessly support and educate employees in their first few weeks.
Workflows keep employees engaged long after onboarding, too, with automated reminders to collect and send small notes of appreciation. Making employees feel special at key points in their work life—like on anniversaries, which are a common trigger for attrition—helps remind them what they love about their jobs, and of all the people they enjoy working with.
These key moments are just the beginning. We are continuing to build a library of Workflows that support managers at every meaningful moment: from becoming a first time manager, to building a newly formed team, to so much more.
Create a workplace where every manager is great
As the future of work continues to unfold, managers need more personalized, targeted support than ever. At Humu, we’ve already seen a 40% boost in manager performance ratings attributed to nudges alone—and we know there’s even more opportunity for growth.
Together with nudges delivered in the flow of work, Humu Coach for Managers helps managers reach their team’s and organization’s goals with less stress—resulting in better employee retention, performance, and engagement.
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