Crafted by Culture Amp
Culture Amp's Manager Effectiveness survey is a simple but powerful way for organizations to capture actionable feedback for their people leaders across a range of management behaviors. The survey, inspired by the Google Oxygen project, produces benchmarks allowing companies and managers to see how they are doing compared to others around the world.
~2m
Questions answered
~65
Organizations
The data meet our criteria as being robust and reliable; unlikely to substantially change over time; and representative of the wider industry. Read more about the methodology.
Data provided by Culture Amp
Computer Software
24%
Information Technology and Services
6%
Apparel & Fashion
4%
Hospital & Health Care
4%
Public Relations and Communications
4%
Commercial Real Estate
4%
Investment Banking
4%
Internet
4%
Financial Services
4%
Utilities
4%
North America
53%
Europe
20%
Asia
16%
Oceania
10%
Manager effectiveness measures the overall perception of a manager's effectiveness by their team. It looks at willingness to recommend as well as motivation and personal connection.
My manager makes me feel valued | 85% |
I would recommend this person as a manager | 82% |
My manager helps me stay motivated to do my best work | 78% |
Generally scores for manager effectiveness are quite high with a significant positive skew. Survey participation is also high, with even the bottom quartile scoring 71%. The data shows that managers have a relatively easy time being good humans to their team members – in areas such as team members feeling valued and managers caring about team members’ wellbeing – whereas being able to motivate team members proves to be more difficult. That’s why we tend to see greater differentiation amongst non-outcome questions, such as coaching, in this survey.
The Culture Amp Manager Effectiveness survey is a simple but powerful way for organizations to capture actionable feedback for their people leaders. If your organization is new to the employee feedback process, or managers have expressed frustration with not getting enough valuable upward feedback, this is a great way to start.
These insights demonstrate how managers are being perceived by their teams – both their strengths as well as areas for development. It’s the kind of information needed to build a strong leadership and management development program and to measure the effectiveness of your interventions. If you are not collecting data along these lines, you can still use the insights from this page to inform how you are prioritizing investment for your leaders. See our guide to running manager effectiveness if you are exploring your options in your organization.
The questions that impact our primary outcome for this survey, manager effectiveness, tell us which aspects affect managers being perceived as effective by their teams. An interesting finding is the wide range of different topics in which managers need to be strong. No single theme is over-represented, unlike in other benchmarks. The top 10 drivers show a slight trend towards effective managers creating inclusive, caring environments where managers get to know their team in ways that demonstrate they care: fortunately, this was among the highest scoring items, showing managers are already doing a good job at this.
The actionable takeaway for managers is that helping set their team members up for success in terms of role and structure is the most important thing to do to be perceived as effective. And with the average score being just 68% favorable, managers have plenty of opportunity for improvement in this area.
1 My manager ensures I am in the right place in the company to be successful | 68% favorable Development |
2 My manager frequently recognises when I deliver good work | 78% favorable Fair Treatment |
3 My manager builds an inclusive team environment | 81% favorable Inclusion |
4 My manager makes decisions effectively (i.e. timely, with sufficient information/ perspectives) | 81% favorable Results-oriented |
5 My manager genuinely cares about my wellbeing | 90% favorable Caring |
People answering Manager Effectiveness 2020 were most favorable about the following areas:
Managers tend to be strongest in the areas of wellbeing, resilience and innovation. Managers are generally strong in showing team members they care about their wellbeing. Resilience of managers is also a standout in perceived strengths in terms of coping well and remaining calm under pressure – behaviors needed in this current environment. While important, it's interesting to note these latter behaviors are not very important to perceived manager effectiveness.
1 My manager genuinely cares about my wellbeing | 90% favorable Caring |
2 My manager gives me enough autonomy to make my own decisions | 89% favorable Fostering Innovation |
3 My manager copes well in a changing environment | 86% favorable Resilience |
People answering Manager Effectiveness 2020 were least favorable about the following areas:
The lower scores for these areas demonstrate that managers generally have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to their development focus, the opportunities managers create for their team members, and the actionable feedback – necessary for developmental learning – that managers should be giving.
1 My manager helps me understand potential career paths at [Company] | 56% favorable Development |
2 My manager helps me find things in my work and career that really inspire me | 64% favorable Development |
3 My manager does a good job of managing our team's work (allocating work assignments, setting priorities, scheduling, etc.) | 67% favorable Fair Treatment |
Insights data provided by Culture Amp. For a complete overview of 2020 Insights (Culture Amp Platform benchmarks) visit the Culture Amp Academy.
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