Gerald Danniel, chief strategy officer and executive vice president at Onvo, a travel stop brand, had to pause the interview. Someone had walked into his office, and he wanted to make sure they were heard.
“They don’t have to jump through hoops,” he said of the 1,600 employees who work for the company. “They can talk directly with owners any time, or any of us.”
This stance that has been particularly important for the organization’s 75 front-line managers, who the company considers critical to its overall success. They are a critical link between front-line workers at the company’s travel plazas, restaurants and hotels in Pennsylvania and New York, and the rest of the organization.
But the front-line manager role can sometimes go under-appreciated, especially when it comes to hearing and acting on feedback. If these voices aren’t listened to — or flat out ignored — organizational operations can suffer, experts told HR Dive.
Here’s how to make sure their feedback is heard and acted on.
When front-line managers are ignored, work suffers
Despite knowing how important front-line managers are, their feedback is often ignored.
According to technology company SafetyCulture’s Feedback from the Field report, which surveyed 1,019 middle managers, 85% of respondents said that they submit improvement ideas, but only 54% say their ideas are implemented. The report also found that 51% of respondents say unresolved issues continue to drive repeated mistakes and inefficiencies. Even worse, when ideas are ignored, 38% stop submitting suggestions, and 25% said they are more likely to leave the organization.
“Improving how organizations capture and act on frontline insight is one of the most overlooked drivers of performance. When employees can see their ideas moving forward and making a difference, it strengthens the feedback loop across the entire business,” Tom Murdock, global head of Go-to-Market at SafetyCulture, said in a statement about the report.
While front-line managers inform management of what’s going on at the ground level, they are an important conduit for worker sentiment, too, said Sandra Moran, chief customer experience officer at software company Schoox. Managers are often responsible for putting corporate policy into action, and the ones who are going to troubleshoot those ideas in the field.
“In the moment of interaction with the employee, the manager is really that primary vehicle,” Moran said.
In an industry like hospitality, which has a high turnover rate, front-line managers are also critical in keeping workers on the job. “If a company is going to improve the operational metrics of the business, I have to get a handle on what are the real reasons why people don’t stay in this role,” Moran said.
If front-line managers aren’t being heard, then that information may never filter up — and those problems may become constant for the company.
Front-line manager feedback can change organizations, for good
At Onvo, enabling easy feedback for front-line managers — and treating it with the gravity it deserves — has improved company operations across the board.
In addition to their open door policy, the company also has an annual leadership summit where all of their general managers (as their front-line managers are called) meet and bounce ideas off each other. This kind of environment can also help general managers who “might be shy to talk to someone to give feedback,” Danniel said.
That’s how the company implemented a policy that customers are greeted by an employee saying “Welcome to Onvo” when they come in the door. One location tried it, and their front-line manger presented its success at the GM summit. It’s now a corporate-wide policy, and as a result, customer satisfaction has improved across the company’s locations, Danniel said.
Open feedback also led to changing the company’s HR technology solution. Front-line managers reported that having different systems for things like payroll and benefits management — systems they could access but employees couldn’t — meant they were spending a lot of time trying to answer employee questions. With a new system, employees can easily find the answers themselves. “Now [front-line managers] can do everything in one system and spend less time in the office and more time outside,” Danniel said.
While making sure feedback is heard can lead to big changes, small fixes at specific locations are important too so that a nagging problem doesn’t become a headache that pushes a front-line worker or manager to leave.
That doesn’t mean that every single piece of feedback from a front-line manager becomes company policy, but “there has to be actionable results of what they said,” Danniel added, even if the feedback isn’t going to lead to a policy change.
