Thank you to everyone who completed the 2014 Manager Effectiveness Survey. Improving manager effectiveness is one of our most important employee priorities to ensure we succeed in delivering on our growth ambitions in Asia. Employees with more effective managers tend to be more highly engaged, which in turn helps us to improve productivity and build a culture of success. Further to Donald Guloien’s recent message, I’d like to update you on some high-level Asia findings.
Responses overall were in line with the 2013 employee engagement survey. Our overall employee engagement score remained at 59 per cent, in line with the global average but below those of “best practice” companies. The survey also showed that 65% of employees rated their manager as effective (up 1%) in providing leadership to their teams. More detailed responses were also broadly similar. For example, the number saying their manager recognizes their efforts and results (69%) and takes the time to celebrate success (60%) were both up 1%, while there was no change in the number saying their manager understands their job well enough to evaluate their performance (68%), or inspires them to do their best work every day (60%). While these results reflect progress, clearly we have a great opportunity to significantly improve in these areas.
A natural first step to achieving this is to increase the ability of managers to carry out their leadership roles. In this area, there were some encouraging results. For example, the percentage of managers who agree that they get the support they need to successfully manage others rose to 66% (up 10%). The proportion feeling they have the training and development they need to provide valuable career advice rose to 60% (up 5%). And the number who said they have time enough each day to provide feedback and coaching within their team rose to 58% (up 4%). Again our destination should have higher scores in each of these areas but this is a positive start.
Donald set out a number of areas where the company is investing to drive further improvements in manager effectiveness, and all of these also apply to Asia. Building high performance teams and formal career development discussions are some of many key focus areas in 2015 to help managers inspire and motivate their teams.
The most important actions we can take, however, are the ones that are specific to individual managers and their teams. Overall findings are useful but to make a difference we need to target improvement where it will have most impact. This is especially important in Asia, where average results can mask a very wide range of scores across markets and functions. We have therefore arranged for findings to be broken down through several layers of management to get more meaningful, actionable data. I am encouraging senior management to consider these results, engage their teams and take action accordingly.
Reading your feedback, one of the comments that I found most striking was from an employee who wrote of her manager: “She is a good ‘leader’ instead of a ‘boss’, who can motivate and develop people in order to achieve the goals of the individuals, team and the company.” I hope that, as we invest more time and resources in this priority, this is a sentiment we will hear from more employees in the future.