According to Gallup, half of adult workers left a job to “get away from their manager”, due to dissatisfaction with their worker-manager relationship. Interesting, when asked if “I feel I can approach my manager with any type of question”, more than half gave the highest agreement rating. Therefore, according to The Wall Street Journal (based on the same Gallup poll), this is “a sign that manger openness may be tied to worker productivity”.

The so-called worker-manager relationship, or “work group”, is the foundation of worker productivity, satisfaction and growth. It is where the day to day work occurs. Unfortunately, this critical relationship relies on the communication capabilities of its participants in order to succeed. When one or both individuals exemplifies poor communication, the workgroup can break down, and along with it, so can performance.

The typical workgroup today is dependent upon face-to-face, telephone or email interaction. This is how supervisors discuss and assign projects to their subordinates and where workers have an opportunity to ask questions, make their own recommendations, challenge ideas and so on. There are, however, inherent challenges with this approach. Accountability is left to chance in many cases. Not all managers use Gantt charts to track worker projects and progress. Those in project management rolls do, but most others rely on calendar notifications, Post-It Notes and the good old memory to ensure deadlines are met and output continues to progress.

Cloud based workgroup management tools can bring a new element to workgroups. Assignments can be given on the fly and easily and centrally tracked, complete with automated reminders and dashboards displaying all open projects. Communication in the workgroup can be automatically logged for later recall if necessary, and managers with multiple workgroups can easily manage all staff with collapsible/expandable tree-like folder schema which keeps everything hierarchical and organized.

With work group management tools employed and shared among workers and their supervisors, these critical workplace relationships can yield higher satisfaction, performance and productivity.