Page 181 - Retaining Top Employees

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The Role of the Manager, Part 1 169

Give Them What They Need!
Many managers feel that their responsibility for providing
resources to their employees reduces them to playing
the role of the employees’ assistant.This is a critical misunderstanding.
As stated earlier,it’s a manager’s basic responsibility to ensure an
environment in which all of his or her employees can work to the
best of their abilities.That environment includes resources.
As Brad Humphrey and Jeff Stokes state in The 21st Century Supervisor
(Jossey-Bass,2000),“To keep employees on track and performing at
optimum levels,you will be required to provide employees with all the
different things they need to accomplish their tasks.” And they devote a
chapter in their book to “resource management skills”—“Giving Your
Employees What They Need to Succeed.” It’s as simple as that.
Accountability
Finally, in acting as a buffer for your top employees, you must
keep accountability from “leaking” to an unacceptable level.
Another aspect of the “radar screen” phenomenon, here’s how
it goes.
You’ve got an employee whose performance is beginning to
attract the attention of senior management. Either because
she’s costing more than other employees (top performers don’t
come cheap) or because of the prominent role she’s playing in
helping the organization achieve its strategic goals, the CEO
decides he’d like your top performer to “pop in from time to
time” to keep him apprised of how things are going. Over a
period of time, the “pop-ins” turn into regular meetings, during
which the CEO is coaching, mentoring, and/or appraising the
performance of your employee.
This process will ultimately lead to one of two things:
• You’re gradually supplanted as manager of this top per-
former.
• The top performer becomes confused and distracted by
reporting to two managers.
Either way, this “accountability leak” has a negative effect
on retention. To keep such leaks from developing, you must