Measure manager effectiveness using the HR Outcomes Dashboard

By default, Account admins and HR admins can see the MEI, but visibility can be customized to suit your organization's needs. Account admins can manage role-based access and grant access to specific individuals.

The MEI is measured using a combination of objective data—such as reviewing Check-ins, conducting 1-on-1 meetings, and providing recognition within 15Five—and subjective data from manager effectiveness assessments (either engagement surveys or review cycles) that evaluate core managerial competencies. The magic of this metric is in the configuration, which you can customize based on your organization's philosophy of what makes an effective manager.

Help Center article 💡: Configure the Manager Effectiveness Indicator
Help Center article 💡: Run a Manager Effectiveness review cycle
Help Center article 💡: Run a Manager Effectiveness engagement survey

• Share updates during executive leadership team meetings: Present MEI insights during executive leadership team meetings to provide a clear picture of manager effectiveness across the organization. By showing MEI trends and correlations with key business outcomes such as retention, engagement, and performance, you can inform leadership about areas of concern or improvement. This data helps executives understand the link between managerial effectiveness and organizational success, supporting strategic planning and resource allocation.
• Prepare for data-driven discussions with managers within your organization: Utilize the MEI breakdown to prepare for performance discussions with managers. Before meetings, review each manager's MEI scores along with their scores in specific MEI factors. This allows you to have focused, data-driven conversations about their strengths and opportunities for growth. By discussing MEI data, you can collaboratively create professional development OKRs that are aligned with both individual manager goals and broader organizational objectives.
• See how your HR initiatives impact manager effectiveness: Track changes in MEI throughout the course of an Action Plan. This allows you to see the impact manager effectiveness has on increasing HR Outcomes (employee performance, engagement, and retention), measure the direct impact of HR programs on manager effectiveness, and make data-driven decisions on where to invest further or adjust strategies.

The Current MEI in the top, left-hand corner of the page shows your organization's average MEI.

This MEI is calculated based on the weighting of two factors: 1) assessments of manager effectiveness and 2) behaviors in 15Five. Each of these factors includes sub-factors that can be adjusted based on your company's strategy and usage of 15Five.

Click How is the MEI calculated? under the MEI to see what behaviors in 15Five are used to calculate each factor included in your organization's MEI configuration. Learn more about these calculations and how to configure the MEI.

The MEI Trend graph allows you to track how your organization's MEI changes over time. The y-axis of the graph shows MEI, and the x-axis shows weekly dates.

Interact with the MEI Trend graph:

• See how much your current MEI has been impacted from the previous week in the top, right-hand corner of the MEI Trend graph.
  
• Hover over a dot to see the MEI for that week.
  

The MEI Factors Insights section displays the highest and lowest scoring factors from your organization's MEI configuration. This information helps you focus on areas of manager effectiveness with the greatest opportunities for improvement. The factors shown here fall into two categories: objective behaviors in 15Five (e.g., Review usage, 1-on-1s usage) and subjective manager effectiveness competencies, measured through Manager Effectiveness Assessments.

Interact with Factors Insights:

• The factors with the highest scores are listed at the top of the table and pictured in teal. These are the areas your managers are doing well in.
  
• The factors with the lowest scores are listed at the bottom of the table and pictured in yellow. These are the areas of opportunity for your managers.
  
• Hover over a factor to see what inputs are used to measure it.
  

The breakdown table gives you a visualization of how many managers fall into MEI ranges for up to the last 12 weeks.

Interact with the MEI Breakdown:

• Use the "Value range" filters at the top of the table to display specific MEI ranges.
  
• Hover over any color aligned with a date on the x-axis of the graph to see a full breakdown of how many managers fell into each range that week.
  

The manager details section provides comprehensive data for all managers within your organization. Use this section to gain a holistic view of each manager's performance and impact, helping you identify strengths, pinpoint areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to support manager development and drive organizational success.

By default, scores are shown in the list view. However, you can use the icons in the top, right-hand corner of the list toggle between the list and hierarchy views. Continue reading to learn how to interact with each of these views.

Interact with manager details in the list view:

• In the list view, you'll see managers' MEI alongside key metrics for Engagement, Performance, and Turnover. It also shows each manager's span of influence (the total number of employees in their managerial hierarchy) and span of control (the number of their direct reports).
• Click the arrow to the far right of a manager's name to open a sidebar that contains their individual factor stats.
  
  This sidebar contains the following information:
  
  • An overview of how a manager is performing across the factors in your MEI configuration, highlighting areas of success and opportunities for growth.
  • The manager's MEI alongside key metrics for Engagement, Performance, and Turnover.
  • The manager's span of influence (the total number of employees under them in the hierarchy) and span of control (the number of their direct reports)."

Use with manager details in the hierarchy view:

• The hierarchy view allows you to visualize scores based on where managers fall in your organization's managerial hierarchy, presented in a way that centers on the relationships between people. By default, the managers at the top of the hierarchy will appear.
• Click the square icon in the top, right-hand corner of the hierarchy view to expand the chart and view all managers. If at any time you want to return to the default view, click the "Collapse all" icon.
  
• Use your mouse to navigate and zoom in/out of the hierarchy, allowing you to explore different levels of management and focus on specific teams or individuals. You can also click the arrow below a manager box to expand or collapse their hierarchy.
  
• Click on a manager box to open a sidebar that contains their individual factor stats.
  
  
  This sidebar contains the following information:
  
  • An overview of how a manager is performing across the factors in your MEI configuration, highlighting areas of success and opportunities for growth.
  • The manager's MEI alongside key metrics for Engagement, Performance, and Turnover.
  • The manager's span of influence (the total number of employees under them in the hierarchy) and span of control (the number of their direct reports)."

• Use the "Value range" filters at the top of the heatmap to filter the heatmap to highlight results that meet specific score ranges. As is the case in the Summary tab, the factors shown in the heatmap fall into two categories: objective behaviors in 15Five (e.g., Review usage, 1-on-1s usage) and subjective manager effectiveness competencies, measured through Manager Effectiveness Assessments.
  
  
  💡

  Tip

  The top row of the heatmap always shows your organization's average factor scores so you can compare individual manager scores to organization-wide performance.

• Hover over a usage factor to see how it's measured. Or, hover over a competency factor to see how it's defined.
  

• Inform the actions you include in manager-specific Action Plans: Leverage MEI data to create tailored Action Plans for managers who have similar areas of opportunity. By analyzing each manager's strengths and areas for improvement, you can design targeted actions to develop their skills in key competencies. Check out the "Use insights to create targeted actions in Action Plans" best practice in the next section of this article for an example of how this may look.
• Identify organizational strengths and opportunities: Utilize the heatmap to identify which factors your organization is excelling in and where your areas of opportunity lie. Celebrate strengths and leverage them as examples of best practices. Simultaneously, pinpoint areas where improvement is needed and take action to improve them.

• Identify cohorts of managers with similar areas of opportunity: Use the heatmap to identify cohorts of managers that exhibit similar opportunities for improvement. Tailor development initiatives to address specific needs within each cohort, fostering a culture of continuous improvement across the organization. This proactive approach can help managers enhance their skills and become more effective leaders.

• Identify outliers: Leverage the heatmap to identify outliers—managers whose performance deviates from the norm across various factors. Investigate the reasons behind their exceptional performance or areas needing improvement. Develop tailored strategies to either replicate successes or address areas of concern, ensuring a more balanced and effective leadership landscape within the organization.

Action Plans in 15Five are strategic plans that HR teams use to organize and measure the work you're doing to improve HR outcomes (employee performance, engagement, and/or retention) in your organization. As you create Action Plans to increase outcomes, dig into MEI data to inform the actions that you assign to managers.

🌟 Let's walk through an example.

Upon checking the HR Outcomes Dashboard (in-app link), you notice that engagement is trending downward, which is concerning. Engagement plays a huge role in...

• Organizational success (Gallup reports that companies with a highly engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability),
• Employee performance (organizations with engaged employees outperform those without by an astounding 202%), and
• Workforce retention (Engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organization than disengaged employees.)

Thus, you decide to create an Action Plan aimed at increasing employee engagement.

To better understand the factors contributing to low engagement, you click 🔍 Explore this data in the Engagement scorecard and scroll to the "Drivers" section of the data insight. Here, you notice that Feedback is the lowest driver score for your organization.

Referring to our "Engagement drivers" article, you see that feedback is a measurement of an employee's direct manager and assesses the employee's perception of the feedback they receive in terms of amount, frequency, and usefulness. This driver helps leaders understand the effectiveness of their communication with employees.

As you dig into MEI data, you notice that several managers have low scores in the "Giving and Receiving Feedback" competency, which has a clear tie to the feedback driver.

With this in mind, you decide to add actions to the Action Plan that are targeted at increasing the feedback skills of managers who scored low in the "Giving and Receiving Feedback" competency. Here are some examples of actions you may assign to these managers:

• Action Items
  • Hold regular 1-on-1s
  • Provide feedback using 15Five's Feedback feature
  • Request feedback from your direct reports using 15Five's Feedback feature
  • Hold a Best-Self Kickoff with your direct reports
• Discussions
  • "How do you prefer to receive feedback—during our 1-on-1s, in real-time, or in writing?"
  • "What can we do to create a more open and feedback-rich environment within our team?"
  • "Is there any feedback you’d like to give me regarding my management style or support?"
• Coaching Session
  • Complete a 1:1 coaching session with one of 15Five's certified coaches with a focus area of "Giving and Receiving Feedback"
• Complete Microlearnings
  • Meaningful 1-on-1's: Goals, Growth, Feedback
  • Hard Conversations Made Easier
• Complete Transform Courses
  • Creating a Culture of Feedback
  • Feedback for Appreciation
  • Feedback for Redirection
  • Giving Feedback that Drives Performance
  • Building Team Trust with Dr. Jan Ferri-Reed
  • Managing Communication & Emotions in Conflict with Irma Tyler-Wood
  • Managing Emotions in Difficult Conversations with Dr. Debbye Turner Bell
• Give Individual High Fives
  • Give a high five to each member of your team that highlights something positive they recently achieved at work

Upon the conclusion of the Action Plan, you can launch a company-wide engagement survey that includes the Core EngageSurvey and the Manager Effectiveness Survey. Once the survey is complete, you can use the HR Outcomes Dashboard to see the impact that the Action Plan had on your organization's Engagement Score, the feedback driver score, and MEI.

This data helps executives understand the link between managerial effectiveness and organizational success, supporting strategic planning and resource allocation.

By default, 15Five's recommended configuration is applied to your account, which contains all possible factors in the MEI configuration. If your organization has some features enabled that aren't currently being utilized, you may want to customize the configuration to remove feature-specific usage factors. You can use the Factors tab of the MEI to see what areas managers are scoring lowest in and either disable that factor in your MEI configuration or set clearer expectations around usage.

And be sure to review your configuration periodically! If your organization's expectations around manager effectiveness change, you can adjust the weight of factors or add/remove factors as needed.

MEI is calculated using a combination of subjective data, gathered through manager effectiveness assessments, and objective data, gathered through 15Five feature usage. If you choose to include usage factors in your configuration, make sure that managers understand what's expected of them. Click How is the MEI calculated? in the MEI's Summary tab to see what inputs are used to measure usage factors (Behaviors in 15Five).

For example, if your configuration includes the "Check-ins usage" factor, the inputs are % of Check-ins submitted by direct reports and their manager, % of Check-ins reviewed by the manager, and % of reviewed Check-ins that the manager interacted with. These are the behaviors that managers need to ensure are occurring in 15Five to maximize their score for the Check-ins usage factor.

You can learn more about each usage factor and access feature-specific resources to share with managers in our "Configure the Manager Effectiveness Indicator" article.

If you haven't run a manager effectiveness review cycle or manager effectiveness engagement survey, you cannot include the 'Manager Effectiveness Assessment' factor in your MEI calculation. If you have a review cycle or engagement cycle coming up, consider adding manager effectiveness questions so you can capture data for your calculation. If not, consider launching a stand-alone manager effectiveness review or engagement survey.

💡 Help Center article: Run a manager effectiveness review cycle
💡 Help Center article: Run a manager effectiveness engagement survey

15Five Transform offers on-demand training and live coaching that's designed to help managers think as leaders who take action to keep their teams motivated, engaged, and thriving— leading to powerful business results. Transform's offerings are aligned with manager effectiveness competencies.

Through Transform, managers can access the following offerings:

• Microlearning: Bite-sized manager training courses designed to enhance manager effectiveness within the flow of work.
• On-demand training: Manager courses from our curated on-demand course library. This library contains courses created by 15Five's in-house coaching experts and Luminary content— course content created by thought leaders who defined their categories.
• Live group coaching: A series of private, 60-minute group coaching sessions with our certified in-house coaches, delivered to cohorts of up to 10 managers every month. 
• Live 1:1 coaching: a partnership between a manager and one of 15Five’s certified coaches, focused on the manager's individual goals. These sessions are assigned to managers using Actions.

Learn more about each of these offerings in our Transform Overview article.

While manager effectiveness engagement surveys and review cycles are a great way to assess manager effectiveness, they typically only take place a few times a year. The MEI is calculated weekly and includes trend data so HR leaders can always see the current state of manager effectiveness and take action.

If you notice that managers with a lot of direct reports have a lower MEI, it may be because they're overstretched/have too many direct reports. To help these managers be more effective, offer them more support or consider moving some of their direct reports to other teams.

We know that all managers have different strengths and areas of opportunity. Consider interviewing your top managers to see what's going right and have them share best practices, or utilize them as mentors. If managers need additional training, launch initiatives to drive them up to higher levels.