Role of the Line Manager

A line manager is the manager who is directly responsible for an employee. A line manager will contribute directly to the output of products or services. The benefits of a line manager being more involved in HR activities are:

· It will produce better relationships between the line manager and employees.
· It means line managers will be more involved, and enables better communication with employees.
· Enables them to give appraisals to employees in order to help them improve their performance.
· Enables managers to offer further training, coaching and guidance to employees.
· A line manager will have skills that maybe a human resource manager does not.


Drawbacks are:

· A line manager is not a specialist in human resources.
· The relationship between the line manager and the HR manager may deteriorate.
· Line manager may already have too much work to do, so could give less time to HR activities.
· Line manager may not actually care much about HR activities.
· Line manager may focus too much on HR activities and spend less time on other, perhaps more important roles.

In order for a line manager to effectively manage people, he/she will need to have good communication and motivational skills. They will also need to be good at training people and obviously they will need to be organised in order to effectively manage employees. Well-managed front line managers are more likely to go on to lead high performing teams. Furthermore, line managers will need to be good at making decisions as there will be plenty of those for them to make! My line manager at Waitrose was pretty easy going. I felt that I had a pretty good relationship with him, and was able to voice any issues or concerns I had if I had any. He was always good at praising me, whenever I worked hard, and he always made sure that I was properly trained in order to fulfill my job role. Whenever he wanted me to know something, he would communicate it to me himself. The one area I found that he wasn’t very good in was motivating people. As hard as he could try, I noticed that his employees just did not seem to get motivated by what he would say. All in all however, I felt he was a good manager and that the work was always completed on time, with all of his employees saying how much they liked him, that is proof enough to show that he is a fine line manager.

After looking at the job roles of both a line manager and a human resources manager, I feel that my skills are more suited to being a human resource manager. Line managers are more concerned with the allocation of duties and the organisation of work on the department level. HR managers on the other hand are more concerned with broader aspects of procedures that affect the organisation as a whole, or the staff generally. It is for these reasons that I would be more suited to becoming a HR manager. I am not the most organised person, and I am much better with people. I am good at making decisions, so I would be good at recruiting people. Another skill I have, is that I tend to be able to motivate people quite well. This skill would be useful to have when inducting and training employees. HR managers are involved in employee development, and I know I would be good at this, as I consider myself to be a “people’s person”. I would definitely take interest in my staff and ensure that our relationships were very friendly and professional. These are the reasons that I would be a much better HR manager than line manager.