Managers remain central to how employees experience an organisation, from performance and feedback to career growth and development. MORAKINYO (AKIN) ISAAC-OLANIYI, Associate Director of Talent Development and Performance Management at IHS Towers, discusses in this interview why managers remain critical to employee experience, the responsibilities that should sit with line managers, and how organisations can improve performance, leadership and career development.
Companies have invested in HR systems, performance processes, engagement surveys and learning platforms. Why does the employee experience still depend so much on the quality of the manager?
Because employees do not really experience a system in isolation. They experience what their manager does with it. A performance platform can create reminders, but the manager clarifies priorities. An engagement survey can reveal a problem, but the manager decides whether the team discusses it honestly. A learning platform can offer courses, but the manager creates opportunities to apply the learning.
The manager is really the link between what the organisation intends and what employees experience day to day. Technology and HR processes can create consistency, evidence and scale, but they cannot replace judgement, courage or conversation. That is why two employees in the same company, under the same policies, can have completely different experiences. The difference is often the quality of management closest to them. A wise man once said. Everything rises and falls on leadership.
Are organisations putting too much responsibility on HR to solve problems that should be addressed by line managers?
Yes, especially when HR is expected to compensate for weak management. HR should design fair systems, build capability, provide data, advise on difficult cases and enforce governance. But HR should not become the substitute manager who sets priorities, gives routine feedback, resolves every interpersonal tension, or explains performance expectations on behalf of the line leader.
When ownership is blurred, managers will escalate normal leadership responsibilities to HR, and employees will continue to bypass their manager. The answer is not for HR to withdraw; it is to define the contract clearly. HR enables and challenges. Managers lead the work and the people doing it. Senior leaders must then hold managers accountable when they repeatedly avoid that responsibility.
What organisational problems are often presented to HR but should actually be owned by managers?
Common examples are poor performance that has never been discussed, conflict allowed to deteriorate, unclear responsibilities, unsustainable workloads, inconsistent recognition, weak meeting discipline and employees who have heard nothing about their career for two years. These arrive in HR as ‘people problems,’ but most began as unattended management work.
HR may need to advise, mediate or protect fairness, especially where risk is involved. However, the manager must still own the conversation and the operating decision. If every difficult issue is transferred to HR, the organisation creates managers who allocate tasks but do not truly lead. A useful test is: does this issue require enterprise policy or specialist judgement, or does it require a manager to be clear, fair and timely?
Performance management remains a challenge in many organisations. What role does the manager play in making performance conversations work?
The manager makes performance management real by turning an annual event into an ongoing management rhythm. That means agreeing current priorities, defining what good performance looks like, checking progress, removing obstacles, recognising contribution and addressing concerns early.
The most important principle is no surprises. A year-end rating should summarise conversations that have already happened, not introduce information the employee is hearing for the first time. Managers also need to revisit objectives when the business changes; otherwise, they administer January’s objectives while employees deliver August’s priorities. HR can provide the framework and calibration, but the quality of performance management is determined in the frequent, specific and evidence-based conversations between the manager and employee.
Why do managers often struggle to give employees clear feedback, and what does that cost the organisation?
Many managers confuse clarity with harshness. They fear damaging the relationship, provoking defensiveness or saying the wrong thing, so they soften the message until the employee cannot tell what needs to change. Others lack evidence, wait too long, or have never been taught how to separate the person from the behaviour and its impact.
The cost is substantial: problems continue, stronger colleagues carry the load, promotion and pay decisions appear unfair, and the eventual conversation becomes more difficult because months of opportunity have been lost. It can also create employee-relations risk when the first documented concern appears shortly before a formal action. Clear feedback is not cruelty. Delivered early, specifically and with support, it is one of the fairest things a manager can provide.
What should companies do differently when preparing employees for their first management role?
They should stop treating the first management role as a reward for technical excellence. The organisation should assess whether the person wants to lead people and shows the judgement, empathy and learning agility required. Preparation should begin before appointment through project leadership, acting responsibility, shadowing and honest feedback.
Once appointed, the new manager needs a structured ninety-day transition: how to set expectations, delegate, coach, handle conflict, manage performance, and make fair decisions. Pair training with a mentor or coach and regular check-ins from the manager’s manager. Most importantly, reset the definition of success. The first-time manager is no longer measured only by personal output; success is now the clarity, capability, and performance created through other people.
Leadership development programmes are common, but what happens when managers return to work, and their day-to-day behaviour does not change?
Usually, it means the programme created insight in the room, but that insight did not transfer into day-to-day behaviour. Behaviour changes when learning is connected to real work, reinforced by the manager and measured over time. A participant can leave a workshop inspired and return to incentives, workload and senior-leader behaviour that reward the old habits.
Every leadership programme should end with two or three observable commitments tied to current business challenges. The manager’s manager should review them, peers should provide practice and feedback, and progress should be checked after thirty, sixty and ninety days. If the workplace does not reinforce the behaviour, the organisation should not blame the course participant alone. Development is an operating system: programme, manager, opportunity, feedback and accountability must work together.
How should managers approach career conversations with employees who want to grow but cannot see a clear path within the organisation?
Managers need to have honest conversations with their team members without becoming discouraging. A manager should first understand what growth means to the employee: promotion, broader scope, deeper expertise, a different function or greater impact. Then identify two or three credible paths, the experience each requires and the gaps to close.
Where an immediate role is unavailable, the manager can still create movement through stretch work, projects, acting assignments, mentoring, exposure or a lateral move. What should be avoided is the vague instruction to ‘be patient’ with no plan. Managers should not promise jobs they cannot control, but they should advocate, make opportunities visible and help the employee build evidence. Career visibility is often as important as immediate promotion.
When an employee decides to leave, how often should the organisation look at the manager as part of the reason, and what should it learn from that?
The organisation should always consider the manager, but it should not assume the manager is automatically at fault. People leave for pay, location, family, study, career change and many other reasons. The value comes from patterns: regrettable exits clustered under one manager, repeated comments about trust or growth, low internal movement, rising absence or engagement gaps.
Exit interviews on their own are usually too late and often too polite. Combine them with stay interviews, pulse data, performance patterns and career-conversation quality. The purpose is not to create a blame exercise; it is to identify what the manager could reasonably have influenced. If the same signals repeat, the response should include coaching, clearer expectations and, where behaviour does not improve, consequences.
If you could change one thing about how Nigerian companies develop and manage their managers, what would you change and why?
I would make people management a measured performance responsibility, not an extra activity completed after the ‘real work’. Managers should be assessed on the health and capability of the team: clarity of goals, quality of feedback, development and release of talent, succession depth, engagement actions and how fairly performance issues are handled.
That would change who we select, what we teach and what leaders pay attention to. At present, many organisations promote the best individual contributor, offer a short course and then judge the person mainly on operational results. The message is that delivery matters and management is optional. If we want better managers, the scorecard, promotion criteria and consequences must say that how results are achieved through people is part of the result.
ABOUT MORAKINYO ISAAC-OLANIYI
Morakinyo (Akin) Isaac-Olaniyi is a senior HR and talent leader with close to two decades of experience developing people and organisational capability across multinational businesses. He currently serves as Associate Director, Talent Development at IHS Towers.
His work has covered graduate development, succession planning, high-potential talent, performance management, leadership development and career mobility, including the design and implementation of programmes intended to build sustainable internal talent pipelines. He also brings experience in HR transformation and technology, with a growing focus on applying Product thinking to workplace challenges.
