When preparing your employee data in My Effectory, it’s important to consider how managers will be grouped. The most common and recommended setup is to place managers together in a separate group: at the same level as the teams they lead, but not within them.
Why separate managers?
Managers typically have different responsibilities, experiences, and perspectives than their team members. If they’re grouped together with the people they lead in your group structure, their feedback can distort the team’s results, especially in smaller teams.
Separating managers helps:
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Ensure more reliable and focused team-level results
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Make results easier to interpret for both HR and managers
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Build trust in the feedback among employees
How to separate managers
Your employee data is your starting point. To separate managers, move them out of their own teams and place them in a dedicated group by changing the right variable (column).
Later, when you set up the group structure in My Effectory and choose the levels for it, the managers will automatically appear in the new group. This means they will also be reported as their own group, with their scores combined, giving you a clear picture of the managers’ experiences and perceptions.
Example
Imagine a Sales department with five teams (North, South, East, West, and Central). Each team has several employees and one manager. In the employee data, every manager appears inside their own team.
To separate them, update the managers’ “Team” variable to “Management – Sales.” This change moves all five managers into a single management group, instead of keeping them mixed within their individual teams.
Is there another option?
Yes. In some cases, it may make sense to keep managers in the same group as their teams. For example:
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In very small or flat organizations
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If managers are fully embedded in the day-to-day work of their teams
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If their feedback is considered part of the collective experience
This option may be valid depending on your setup, but be aware it can reduce clarity when interpreting the results.
Still not sure what works best?
We’re happy to help. Reach out to our Helpdesk or your Customer Success Manager, and we’ll help you determine the best approach for your organization and survey goals.