Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, Executive Director of the Workforce Institute.
Our CEO, Aron Ain, always says that every employee deserves a great manager. Today's discussion is about how Kronos has made measurable progress on that promise. Lots of organizations invest lots of money in management training. According to the 2018 Training Industry Report published by Training Magazine, US respondents indicated they'd spend 34% of their training budgets on management and executive employees. With a total training spend of $87.6 billion, that's a lot of investment. Are organizations seeing manager effectiveness increasing as a result of that spend?
The Training Magazine report doesn't include this insight, however the 2018 State of Leadership Development Report from Harvard Business Publishing sheds some light. In it, while 66% of learning and development professionals rate their programs as best-in-class or excellent, only 45% of their line of business peers agree. And 25% of respondents in this survey say there is "no proven ROI" associated with leadership development training.
I recently interviewed Kronos Chief People Officer, Dave Almeda and Kronos Vice President of Global Talent Management, Kim Nugent to discuss how Kronos has implemented - and measured - programs to ensure that every Kronite has a great manager. While we focus a lot in this conversation about how manager effectiveness is developed and measured, we also talk about the importance of ensuring that leadership development is explicitly aligned with the strategic goals of the organization.
In our conversation, we address the following questions and issues:
- Where does management development fit in the overall corporate strategy?
- What role did analytics and evidence-based research play in the development of this program?
- What steps did the team take to ensure that the program addressed Kronos specific needs for leader competencies?
- How is manager effectiveness measured - and how are those results used to coach performance? How is manager buy in acquired?
- How is the impact of the program measured and what have been the measurable results of the program to date?
- What happens when a manager fails to demonstrate improvement of a poor MEI score?
You can listen in on my podcast conversation with Dave and Kim by clicking on the player below.
Additional Resources that explain the Kronos culture and the Manager Effectiveness Program:
- The Case for Measuring Managers at Kronos
- Are Your Managers Effective?
- Aron Ain Explains How to Work Inspired
- Click the play button in the image below to hear Dave and Kim deliver an overview of how the MEI program was designed, developed and deployed at Kronos.