Role of the front-line Manager

Front-line managers are crucial to the success of HR policies and practices. This chapter starts with an analysis of their role generally and their people management responsibilities particularly. It continues with an examination of the respective roles of HR and line management and a discussion of the line manager’s role in implementing HR. The chapter concludes with suggestions on how to improve front-line managers as people managers.

THE BASIC ROLE

Front-line managers as defined by Hutchinson and Purcell (2003) are managers who are responsible for a work group to a higher level of management hierarchy, and are placed in the lower layers of the management hierarchy, normally at the first level. They tend to have employees reporting to them who themselves do not have any management or supervisory responsibility and are responsible for the day-to-day running of their work rather than strategic matters. The roles of such managers typically include a combination of the following activities:

● people management; 

● managing operational costs

● providing technical expertise; 

● organizing, such as planning work allocation and rotas; 

● monitoring work processes; 

● checking quality; 

● dealing with customers/clients; 

● measuring operational performance.

Hutchinson and Purcell noted that in all the 12 organizations in which they conducted their research, the most common people management activity handled by frontline managers was absence management. This could include not just monitoring absence and lateness but also phoning (and even visiting) absent staff at home, conducting back-to-work interviews, counselling staff and conducting disciplinary hearings. Other people management activities were coaching and development, performance appraisal, involvement and communication (thus providing a vital link between team members and more senior managers), and discipline and grievances. In many organizations, recruitment and selection was also carried out by line managers, often in conjunction with HR. Thus in all these organizations frontline managers were carrying out activities that traditionally had been the bread and butter of personnel or HR departments. These people-management duties were larger and encompassed more responsibilities than the traditional supervisory role.