Dive Brief:
- Front-line managers feel unsupported, with 77% saying organizational systems aren’t giving them the guidance they need to handle operational issues that come up, according to new research from Dayforce, a human capital management company.
- The report examined some of the reasons front-line transformations fail and found that many daily workplace decisions are “fragmented across disconnected systems, data, and workflows.” This can put additional pressure on executives and managers, with 44% saying these misaligned processes increase risk “when organizations are asked to do more with less.”
- Meanwhile, 80% of executives and managers said day-to-day tasks made it harder to focus on transformation efforts and prevented these endeavors from working. An additional 67% said decisions were slower because the data needed to make them was scattered across systems.
Dive Insight:
Dayforce surveyed almost 5,700 frontline workers, managers and executives in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. and found a disparity between corporate support and organizational demands.
“Most organizations know they need to adapt to AI, rising cost pressures, and changing employee expectations,” Steve Holdridge, president and chief operating officer of Dayforce, said in a statement. “The harder part is making that change stick.”
The report found that managers and executives reported feeling pressure to move more quickly and increase productivity while also cutting costs, but they’re not being given the cohesive workforce foundation they need to maintain those goals.
Holdridge said that when data and workflows are disconnected, managers spend too much time searching for answers and not enough time acting on them.
“The organizations best positioned for what comes next won’t simply launch more initiatives,” said Holdridge. “They’ll make daily work easier to understand, manage, and change.”
Managers also need to be involved in creating the systems that support them.
A recent report from technology company SafetyCulture found that 85% of middle managers said they submit ideas for improvement, while only 54% said their ideas were implemented. In addition, more than half said that when issues went unresolved, mistakes and inefficiencies kept repeating. Nearly two-fifths (38%) added that their suggestions were ignored, which led them to stop submitting them. Another quarter of respondents said that made them more likely to want to look for another job.
