Employees’ relationship with their supervisors is key factor in engagement

Employers must manage multiple priorities—often on a limited budget. So it can be easy to overlook a “soft” topic, such as making sure supervisors and managers demonstrate care for employees and build positive relationships with them.

However, a recent survey found that having a “caring” manager is a crucial factor in whether employees are engaged. Employers who recognize that, and take steps to educate supervisors and managers about it, can help drive employee engagement and their organization’s success.

The Dale Carnegie Training® survey identified employees’ relationships with their supervisors as a key factor in engagement. The survey found that if employees are “dissatisfied with their immediate supervisor, there is an 80 percent chance that they are disengaged” and that “having a ‘caring’ manager is one of the key elements to a positive and successful employee engagement strategy.”

Belief in senior leadership and pride in working for their company are also key factors that drive engagement, according to the survey of 1,500 employees conducted in February 2012 and April 2012.

In light of the survey findings, Dale Carnegie Training says it is important for supervisors and managers to make their employees feel valued and to demonstrate an interest in their personal lives, health, and well-being. “Employee engagement rates are directly tied to feelings about interaction with their immediate supervisor,” Dale Carnegie Training reports. In fact, nearly half of employees who reported being satisfied with their direct manager were engaged. Meanwhile, 80 percent of those who indicated they were very dissatisfied with their immediate supervisor were disengaged.

In addition, the survey found that disengaged employees are more likely to leave the company for a pay raise than are engaged employees. For example, 26 percent of engaged employees indicated that they would be willing to leave their current position for a 5 percent pay raise, compared to 46 percent of partially engaged employees and 69 percent of disengaged employees, according to the survey.

Fifty-four percent of employees are engaged when they are under the impression that their manager cares about their personal lives, compared to only 17 percent of employees being engaged when they feel otherwise, the survey found.

What is the takeaway? During supervisory training, share statistics to demonstrate the importance of supervisors building a good rapport with their subordinates and provide specific examples on how to accomplish that within your organization.

Google, McKinsey, Apple & Amazon Top List Of Most Desirable Employers For MBAs

Google hasn't lost its mojo--not with MBAs at least.

For the seventh year in a row, Google topped the list of the most desirable MBA employers, according to a newly published survey of MBA opinions by research firm Universum USA. One in every four students–exactly 23.4% of the 3,739 responding MBAs–surveyed at 135 top business schools placed the search firm among its top five. At Google, MBAs work in a wide variety of functions, from product management and sales to finance, marketing and operations.

The annual survey--something of a popularity contest for companies with the MBA crowd--found that McKinsey & Co., which recruits the largest number of top MBAs in any year, was second behind Google, with 16.6% of those polled placing the prestige consulting firm among their top five potential employers. Rounding out the top five were No. 3 Apple, No. 4 Amazon, and No. 5 Boston Consulting Group.

Universum's opinion poll--with had responses from 1,622 women and 2,097 men who were studying for their MBA degrees in the U.S. between the months of December 2012 and March 2013. Students were asked to choose the five companies they would most like to work for from a list of over 175 companies. They also have the opportunity to write-in the name of a company if it was not included in the list. The rankings are based on how many times the company was selected as one of five ideal employers.

The 2013 version of the survey showed gains by such Top 25 companies as Amazon, Nike, Walt Disney, Deloitte, Microsoft, Starbucks, IBM, LVMH, 3M, and the U.S. Department of State (see table on following page of the top 25 companies). Losing ground in the Top 25 were Bain & Co., Goldman Sachs, Facebook, J.P. Morgan, Johnson & Johnson, Blackstone Group, and General Electric.

Some very well-known companies dropped off the Top 100 list entirely. Salesforce.com, which had been ranked 54th last year, disappeared off the list. So did UBS (73), Harrah’s Entertainment (77), Groupon (82), Zynga (85), HSBC (88), Hewlett-Packard (89), Monitor Group (91), Daimler/Mercedes-Benz (94), Colgate-Palmolive (98), National Security Agency (99), and Oracle (100).

They were nudged off the list by No. 30 Nordstrom, No. 54 Estee Lauder, No. 66 H&M, No. 69 GlaxoSmithKline, No. 86 MGM Resorts, No. 92 Northrop Grumman, No. 94 General Motors, No. 95 Intuit, No. 97 Novartis, No. 98 Merck, and No. 99 E&J Gallo.

This year's biggest gainer--other than the newcomers to the most popular list--was Hilton Hotels, which jumped 34 places in a single year to finish 44th. Other companies that have gained significant popularity among the MBAs surveyed tended to be in the healthcare arena. No. 37 eBay rose 24 places, No. 42 Genentech was up 21 spots, No. 65 Pfizer (up 21), and No. 77 Abbot Laboratories (up 20).

This year's biggest loser--other than the companies that did a disappearing act in the Top 100--was Credit Suisse, which fell a remarkable 37 places to a rank of 71 from 34 in 2012. Not far behind among the companies that lost the most popularity were No. 79 Deutsche Bank (down 32 places), No. 89 Siemens (down 29 spots), No. 63 Barclays (down 24), No. 68 Kraft Foods Group (down 22), No. 82 KPMG (down 22), and No. No. 87 Wells Fargo (down 20).