Creating a workforce of high performers is about more than regular check-ins and AI-powered tools; it’s about empowering managers to elevate their team members. With the right mix of priorities, and the permission to focus on developing themselves and their teams, managers will create a culture of high clarity, transparency, trust, and coaching.
Chris Ernst
Chief Learning Officer
Workday
HR and learning and development (L&D) leaders are constantly striving to build organizations where every individual thrives, contributing their best work and delivering results.
My career has shown me that this type of high-performance culture doesn't just materialize; it's meticulously cultivated by the leaders within. And managers are the conduit.
At Workday, we're seeing the impact that a manager-empowered workforce can have. When we embarked on establishing our own Talent Philosophy—a set of core beliefs that guide how we attract, develop, and retain talent—we quickly realized that accountability wasn't just a byproduct, but a foundational pillar.
Managers are the essential link between strategy and execution, the frontlines of employee experience, and the custodians of performance. But how do we truly empower them to embrace this responsibility while fostering genuine accountability?
It starts with putting accountability into action—not just as a concept, but as a lived experience for every manager and, by extension, every employee.
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Without clear expectations from managers, employee performance becomes a guessing game. Only 45% of U.S. employees clearly know what is expected of them at work, according to Gallup, highlighting a significant opportunity for managers to provide more clarity.
Think about the most effective teams you've seen. What's their steel thread? Often, it's a clear sense of purpose, mutual trust, and individuals who understand their contributions to the business.
This isn't accidental—it’s by design and a direct reflection of a strong accountability culture, largely shaped by managers.
It starts with putting accountability into action—not just as a concept, but as a lived experience for every manager and, by extension, every employee.
Just as our Talent Philosophy at Workday guides our people strategies, managers guide their teams, ensuring core company principles translate into daily practice. Ironically, most managers have one need in common when it comes to putting this into practice: They need permission.
Without explicitly setting the expectation that managers are stewards of clear expectations, they’ll never feel the autonomy to do so.
When clarity, consistent feedback, and coaching are tied to manager performance rather than being a nice-to-have, the results create a powerful ripple effect across the entire organization. Employees spend less time navigating ambiguity and more time fostering a sense of purpose.
Let’s take this emphasis on clarity a step further.
86% of workers surveyed say an increasing focus on trust and transparency in the relationship between workers and the organization is very or critically important, according to Deloitte. In fact, this trend is ranked as having the greatest impact on an organization’s success over the next three years.
Clarity is only as powerful as the transparency that accompanies it. When managers consistently follow through and harbor relationships with two-way openness, it builds trust.
As my team member Roxanne Henselman, VP of talent management and talent development here at Workday, says, “Employees crave feedback, and they want to know where they stand; being transparent with them on how they are performing helps build trust and alignment.” I couldn’t agree more.
While it can be intimidating to navigate and establish, transparent relationships at work have a measurable ROI—employees are 80% more likely to be fully engaged if they receive meaningful feedback.
At Workday, we bet strongly on transparency by openly sharing our new performance and potential framework, ensuring no more ambiguity or confusion. This includes making annual calibration and talent discussions transparent and revealing pay information on all job profiles.
"Employees crave feedback, and they want to know where they stand; being transparent with them on how they are performing helps build trust and alignment."
Roxanne Henselman
VP of Talent Management and Talent Development, Workday
Apart from giving them permission to prioritize driving clarity, empowering managers to play an active role in developing a productive, driven team goes beyond simply telling them they're accountable.
It requires a strategic investment in their development and the right tools to support them, especially as work evolves.
This shared ownership for success spans the entire enterprise, ensuring every manager is working toward a true north. Here are three ways we’ve approached this at scale to inspire your accountability journey.
It sounds simple, but in today's dynamic work environment, setting clear, outcomes-based expectations is paramount.
Managers need to define what success looks like for their team based on what needs to be achieved, not just how or where. This shifts the focus from tactical activities to strategic impact.
Empowering managers to focus on the outcome means providing them with the training and resources to:
The days of the annual performance review being the primary feedback mechanism are long gone. Today's workforce craves timely, constructive, and consistent feedback. Our own data at Workday revealed that while feedback was encouraged, employees desired more clarity on career progression.
In order to do that, we adjusted our culture around feedback with intention, which gives our employees more visibility into how we’re measuring their success. In this vein, Roxanne Henselman recently commented on this effort, stating “How we assess performance, rewards, and successors are all areas where we have increased transparency to provide greater clarity across the organization.”
Empowering managers means cultivating a culture where feedback is a continuous conversation, not an event. This involves:
"How we assess performance, rewards, and successors are all areas where we have increased transparency to provide greater clarity across the organization."
Roxanne Henselman
VP of Talent Management and Talent Development, Workday
Perhaps the most transformative aspect of empowering managers is evolving their role into that of a coach. A 2023 analysis published by Frontiers in Psychology highlighted that workplace coaching has a moderate positive impact on performance. When managers adopt a coaching mindset, they shift from directing to developing, helping employees maximize their full potential.
To foster a coaching culture focused on developing their team members, HR leaders can:
When managers adopt a coaching mindset, they shift from directing to developing.
In an era of constant change, the effectiveness of our managers is directly tied to the resilience and success of our organizations.
As we discovered when defining our Talent Philosophy, accountability isn't just a buzzword; it's the operational heartbeat of a thriving culture. Workday's efforts have already shown clear signs of success, including dramatically improved goal setting, with 94% of Workmates holding regular check-ins (up from 74%) and a significant 35% decrease in the number of employees who stated they were “dissatisfied with their growth and career path.”
By empowering managers with clear expectations, fostering ongoing feedback, and transforming them into effective coaches, we don't just drive performance; we build a culture of genuine accountability, trust, and continuous growth. As CEO Carl Eschenbach stated, "Our employees and people leaders now have clarity about what is expected, they know how to take action, and most importantly they understand why our talent practices matter."
When managers are empowered to drive performance, your people and business will thrive.
Employee support for organizational change is in huge decline. Empower your managers to take decisive action and lead transformation at every level of your business with the findings from this Workday report.
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