Direct Supervision

Meanwhile, management may be undergoing changes of its own, and the supervisor needs to help employees understand so they’re not taken by surprise. “Companies have to be more and more nimble all the time,” Kenney says. “They create policies and procedures that are meant to respond to the marketplace. They have to turn on a dime. [Supervisors] who are able to anticipate change and communicate what it’s going to mean for those who are impacted tend to have employees who buy in.”

In short, employees whose supervisors make company policies transparent—explaining why the changes are necessary—tend to feel happier and more confident in their jobs.

What about that old chestnut of human resources, the performance review? Is it a good tool for building the strong supervisor-employee relationship that is necessary to ensure loyalty? Not really, O’Malley Rehfuss says; it’s mainly an administrative tool meant to create a record. But it is part and parcel of the constant communication that must always go on between the supervisor and the employees.

“Performance reviews alone really don’t do much to manage performance,” she says. “If your communication is just the one-time-a-year performance review, then what you say to the employee is going to come as a surprise to them. And it’s going to be a problem.” It’s the one-on-one work throughout the course of the year that molds and grooms employees, she says.

Assuming constant communication does take place, the review can be useful. A really good performance review system does two things, Farrar says: It tells employees how they’re doing from the organization’s point of view, and it allows the organization to get feedback from the person on what resources they need to do their job well.

“The manager’s job is to give the person feedback regularly and to coach them so that they are a better performer,” Kenney says. “The performance review is really just an opportunity to clarify what should have been going on all along. Good managers are not only communicating the goals and values of the organization, but they are also asking people what improvements could be made.”

The most important requirement is that this two-way communication be honest. When the boss asks for an employee’s opinion and actually listens to the answer, Kenney says, it motivates the employee better than anything else. But if the supervisor isn’t really interested, the employee will know—and might seek employment elsewhere.

“They feel as though they’re being told, ‘You are just a spoke in a great big wheel, so just   shut up and I’ll tell you what I want you to do,’” Speckmann notes. “But the people who are closest to the action are the ones who really understand what is going on the best. A good boss is open to new ideas from his or her team.”