25 people manager stats you need to know

In August 2019, The Predictive Index^® conducted a survey to ask 1,038 employees from 13 industries about their managers. This is what we found.

What skills do managers lack most?

Curious which skills managers lack—or lack the most? Here are the skills more than 1,000 employees feel their managers are lacking:

• Nearly 30% of employees believe their manager lacks team-building skills.
• 17.9% of employees said their manager lacks feedback skills.
• 10.65% of employees said their manager lacks delegation skills.
• 14.6% of employees said their manager lacks time management skills.

How frequently do employees meet with their managers?

Have you ever wondered how frequently employees meet with their manager 1:1? 

• 13.7% of employees meet with their manager daily.
• 37.9% of employees meet with their manager weekly.
• 20.4% of employees meet with their manager monthly.
• 4.8% of employees meet with their manager annually
• 3.85% of employees never meet with their manager.
• More than 20% of employees meet with their manager less frequently than once a month.

What’s the age difference between managers and their direct reports?

What’s the age difference between managers and their direct reports? The research found nearly half of employees are younger than their managers.

• 28.3% of employees are older than their managers.
• 49.3% of employees are younger than their managers.
• 21.2% of employees are the same age as their managers.

*The remainder of the respondents were unsure of their manager’s age.

How do employees rate their managers?

While articles on bad managers abound, the sky is not falling! More employees rate their managers as good than bad.

• 60% of people believe they have a “good” or “world-class” manager.
• 5.9% believe their manager is “terrible.”
• 14.8% believe their manager is “not-so-great.”
• 19.4% believe their manager is “average.”

How do managers impact the employee experience?

Studies have found that psychological safety is key to high-performing teams. Psychological safety is the belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.

To this end, we asked a series of questions related to psychological safety. Here’s what we discovered:

• 80% of employees feel they can approach their boss with problems; 11% believe the opposite.
• 67% of employees feel they can make a mistake at work without their manager holding it against them; 15% disagree with this sentiment.
• 75% of employees feel they can easily approach their manager to ask for help; another 15% don’t feel this way.
• 59% of employees feel their manager would never act in a way to undermine their efforts; 24% believe their manager would.
• 70% of employees feel their manager values their unique skills; another 15% don’t think their skills are valued by their manager.
• 74% of employees feel their manager respects them; 6.5% don’t feel respected by their manager.
• 68% of employees feel their manager respects their values, even if they disagree; 11% feel otherwise.
• 43% of employees don’t believe their manager plays favorites; a staggering 33.4% said they think their manager plays favorites.

Interested in sharing these stats? Check out the full report for shareable charts.