What Do Employees Want from Their Bosses?

On Albert’s List, a frequent topic of conversation stems around workplace interaction — particularly between bosses and their reports. While we have looked to Dilbert cartoons, standup comedians, career coaches, and Forbes articles for years to ascertain what exactly this relationship looks like, the same questions continue to be asked:

What makes a great boss?

and

What makes a not so great boss?

We took a deeper look.

What Employees Like

First, we asked what makes a boss great. While its presumed that being a good person makes the top of the list, what makes these results unique from Silicon Valley is that employees are always seeking more out of their opportunity. Here’s what we found:

Our data showed that 30% of employees stated an interest in employee development. As more and more articles in the media proclaim a skills gap problem, this seems to be understandable. Likewise, on the job training occurs far less than ever, leading to organizational attrition.

Not too far below this are mentorship opportunities and empathy / understanding from management. We’d like to think this tie in closely with employee development, especially given that work can be intense, fast-paced, and ever-changing given the constant emergence of new technologies and industries. Just observe the past decade with the arrival of new categories such as the Internet of Things (IoT), mixed reality (AR/VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) alongside new coding languages and domain-specific methodologies. While no one will have 15 years of Angular or React JavaScript experience for quite some time, perhaps these results should speak to the ambition of many professionals to learn.

It should also be noted which results got fewer attention. Of surprise was a manager providing good feedback and transparency, suggesting that of our crowd of professionals, there are many self-starters who can communicate their needs at an adequate time.

So what’s the high level then? If you want your employees to succeed, the answer has always been the same — invest in your talent, and your talent will take your organization to the next level.

What Employees Dislike

Next, we asked what employees disliked the most and this sample size was slightly larger. Perhaps it’s important to note that when we spend so much of our days at the office, having to deal with the negatives outweighs the positives by a long shot. Here’s what we came up with:

Your reports hate drama. Sneaking ahead to the top was the playing of politics and toxicity of managers who include their personal life details and emotions into the daily grind. It’s well known that Silicon Valley is competitive with some of the brightest minds competing against one another to make it to the top, but for many of our community members, playing the political game to get to the top is absolutely disgusting.

Second and third to these reflected similar sentiments in what employees are seeking in their reports, respectively focused on a disinterest in employee development and a lack of experience in the role. While both of these are probably lesser at larger organizations (we did not segment for this), both are major hurdles at startups where employees must wear multiple hats to accomplish what is needed.

Looking down the rest of the list, negatives also included inattentiveness, pickiness for the small details, and a reactive management style.

So what’s the high level? Like manager positives, the negatives are much the same in that employees are craving for organizations to invest in them just like they used to. Conversely from the positive results, doing the above here will likely cause organizational attrition.

What’s Next?

In the post-Great Recession era, employment landscapes have changed. In Silicon Valley, training on the job is not as common given the velocity of industries and managers may not have time for the soft skills sorely needed to develop leaders. Furthermore, many well-known technology companies don’t even allow for contractors to seek professional development from their managers, stunting growth and leaving such exercises to the employees themselves. However, given that work such an integral part of our lives, it doesn’t mean we can’t change.

If you want to discover how you can be a manager, join us over at Albert’s List. We’re a community of 37,600 job seekers, recruiters, hiring managers, and career services professionals dedicated to helping accelerate job searches for new graduates and professionals in technology, marketing, and design. If you’re a manager, even better: Let us know what feedback you need so that we can all make the workplace a better place to be.