This Company Removed All Its Managers In New Approach. Result: Happier Employees

Employee engagement has become a pressing concern in today's rapidly changing workplace landscape. Recently, a company introduced a new innovative approach in order to boost productivity. Time Etc, a virtual assistant platform, decided to get rid of traditional managers and replace them with coaches, Fortune reported. And the results were impressive, to say the least.

With a ratio of one coach per six employees, the coaches' job was to help employees maximise productivity by offering close mentoring and feedback, encouraging them to identify how they work best, and making sure they are offered training and support to develop professionally.

"We started asking the people we were hiring what they needed from a manager. What stood out was how the list they gave us – goal-setting, feedback, personal and professional development opportunities, autonomy – sounded much more like they needed a coach, rather than a manager,'' team at Time Etc. said.

''Like managers, coaches are still there to act as a first port of call when challenges arise. But instead of directing from above, the focus is on empowering and supporting the employee to find their own way forward,'' the team added.

The company also organizes regular workshops, inviting external experts to conduct tailored classes on various topics, such as mindfulness and confidence building.

The new approach by the company came after an annual survey by Gallup, showed that employee engagement dropped to a seven-year low in 2022. Only a third of workers reported feeling engaged at work, while almost a fifth (18%) described themselves as ''actively disengaged.''

As a result of the radical experiment, the company experienced a significant impact in terms of both engagement and productivity.

The company experienced a drop in employee turnover successfully weathering the storm of the great resignation, along with a decrease in sick days. Most importantly, performance on key goals improved by up to an impressive 20%, and the employees were much happier. 

Since these changes, Time Etc consistently ranks in the top 1% of teams worldwide in Gallup's employee engagement survey.