One global equipment manufacturer asks people why they are leaving on the way out, the way a lot of companies do. They rank the reasons every year, and for years "immediate supervisor" came back third.
Then they rebuilt what happens in the 90 days after their supervisor training. The next time they ranked the reasons, immediate supervisor came back ninth. They ran the same curriculum both times.
That is the shortest honest answer to how to improve employee engagement at work.
Engagement moves one crew at a time
Average your engagement score across the company and you average your supervisors together. Two crews in the same plant, on one shift premium and one benefits plan, will return different scores, and the difference traces back to the two people running them.
So sort the report by supervisor. Most HR teams have the data and have run it by department, and the first time they sort it by supervisor the pattern is clear enough to settle it.
The exit interview undercounts the reason
Gallup studied employees who left their organizations voluntarily in 2024 and found that 42 percent said their manager or their company could have done something to keep them. Pay shows up on the form because it is the safe answer and it takes four seconds to check the box.
Anyone who has run exit interviews for a few years knows the box is soft. That manufacturer knew it too, which is why they kept ranking the reasons year after year.
What to put in place after the training
The clients whose numbers moved all did three things.
The supervisor's own manager has a job in the 90 days, and somebody has told him what it is. He asks about one specific conversation in the weekly one-on-one, and he raises it before output. Most managers will do this the first time HR asks them to.
Somebody checks whether the skill reached the floor. One manufacturer we work with assigns the follow-up work in the learning system at 60 and 90 days, and their HR managers run a lunch and learn on one module at a time so the supervisors keep talking about it in front of each other.
The company measures three or four things and leaves the rest alone until month six. Count the employee relations incidents that reach HR, the absenteeism by crew, and the promotions and scope changes among the people who went through the program. Those three move early.
Adam Boyd, President of Trinity Training and Development, is spending Thursday, November 5 at 10 am CT on exactly this stretch, the 90 days that decide whether supervisor training changes anything on the floor.
The session is free and runs live on Zoom, with polls and open Q&A.
Everyone who attends leaves with a 90-day plan, a 30/60/90 scorecard, and ten questions to ask of any supervisor program. Register even if you have a conflict at that hour, and we will send you the recording and the three tools. Save a seat at frontlineleadershipprogram.com/supervisor-training-webinar.