Abstract

Managers are crucial to employee satisfaction, serving as the bridge between leadership and staff, balancing expectations from both sides. Although managers are important for employee engagement, recent research highlights a significant issue in organizations regarding the low engagement levels of managers themselves. The purpose of this study was to examine the practices leading companies are using to engage managers and support their performance post-COVID-19. Informants from six Fortune 100 and three Fortune 500 companies were recruited using purposive sampling and interviewed for this study. The participant was required to have worked regularly on their company’s enterprise-wide manager engagement programs within the last year. Data were examined using content analysis. Examination of the interview data revealed that companies consider the manager role critical, although managers are affected by competing priorities and limited capacity, resources, and bandwidth. Most of the nine companies examined reportedly utilize nine specific practices for support manager engagement and performance in some fashion. However, many of the practices were new, and participants reported it was too early to be able to report on the impacts of these practices. These exploratory findings indicate that organizations wanting to support manager engagement may wish to implement structured manager engagement programs, formalize leadership roles, ensure alignment of the manager programs with the larger organizational system, develop manager expectations and accountability, foster collaboration between Human Resources and other cross-functional support teams to implement the programs, streamline communications and planning, and address manager bandwidth and capacity issues. Suggestions for continued research also are offered.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Executives—United States; Management—United States

Date of Award

2024

School Affiliation

George L. Graziadio School of Business and Management

Department/Program

Business

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Masters

Faculty Advisor

Gary Mangiofico

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