In many businesses, HR and manager collaboration remains a blind spot : unclear roles, lack of alignment, decisions disconnected from the field. However, improving HR and manager collaboration is now an essential condition for structuring career paths, developing skills and supporting collective performance.
How to overcome silos and build a dynamic that is truly shared between HR, managers and management? Through 5 concrete actions, this article offers a simple roadmap to sustainably improve HR and manager collaboration, and make skills a real common language in the organization.
How to improve HR and manager collaboration? 5 concrete actions to work better together
Improving HR and manager collaboration is not based on a single tool, or on a top-down injunction. This means clarifying roles, structuring useful exchange times, equipping managers and sharing indicators that can be really activated. Here are 5 concrete actions to streamline the relationship between HR and managers, align decisions and make skills a subject that is truly supported by the entire organization.
Clarifying everyone's roles in talent management
When HR and managers don't know exactly “who does what”, the employee experience is affected. This is especially true in talent management, where responsibilities intersect between HR processes, operational emergencies, and strategic decisions.
A good starting point is to pick up the big ones stages of the talent management cycle to clearly assign the roles of each stakeholder.
Here is a summary:
At each stage of the talent management cycle, HR and managers move forward hand in hand, each with their own expertise. While HR sets the framework, equips and structures, managers observe, support and bring skills to life on a daily basis. From the identification of resources to sustainable commitment, their complementarity transforms each action into a real lever for collective development.
Set up regular exchange times
A common culture cannot be decreed. It is built over time, through regular interactions between HR, managers... and their teams. These moments make it possible to align representations, to highlight weak signals and to co-construct solutions rooted in the reality on the ground.
Ritualize exchanges between HR and managers
Monthly points, regular 1:1 meetings or even shared seminars allow you to register talent management in everyday life, and not in a separate HR agenda.
Creating communities of managers
These communities promote the sharing of experiences, tools, and best practices, while strengthening a sense of belonging.
Nurturing a cohesive management culture with Sage France
Under the impetus of Tiphiane Brisou-Debeze, People Director France, Sage has developed a real management community :
- A 30-minute weekly call with all managers;
- An informal exchange Teams group;
- Onboarding in small groups for managers who are new or on the move;
- A Leadership Academy to promote a common management culture.
Bringing tools to managers with Deloitte
The Deloitte Performance & Engagement team has launched a”Managers Factory”, carried by Megane Panis, to structure the support:
- Peer-to-peer co-development programs,
- A shared framework of managerial skills,
- Evangelism sessions on the key postures to adopt.
Train managers to carry the subject
Creating these exchange times is not enough: managers still need to be comfortable talking about skills, development or evolution. This requires that they be trained, equipped and supported to adopt these new reflexes.
Support collaboration on actionable indicators
What cannot be measured does not progress.
To align HR and managers around talent, you still need to rely on HR indicators that really reflect the skills dynamic in the organization. No more generic or purely administrative KPIs: make way for indicators that can be activated, meaningful and rooted in practices.
Focus on indicators that reflect employee ownership
Good metrics aren't limited to a top-down view. They must capture the dynamics of ownership, evolution and commitment around skills.
What skills culture metrics should you use?
We recommend 3 Metrics:
- The number of requests for training or certifications initiated by the employees themselves;
- THEevolution of the level of skills on key frames of reference, as soon as the company measures them via a management tool (cross-evaluations, 360 evaluations, etc.);
- The Number of spontaneous contacts with business leaders or internal experts, to explore new career paths (such as the “Test a Job” system at BPCE with Neobrain).
Set up rituals around these indicators
This data should not only be consolidated by HR: it must fuel management time with managers, inform trade-offs on mobility, development plans, or training priorities.
Connecting learners and business leaders at BPCE
Thanks to the Neobrain platform and its partner TestUnMétier, BPCE has integrated a system for connecting employees and business leaders. The result: dozens of “business immersions” carried out, vocations revealed, and a better understanding of internal opportunities.
Read the BPCE and Neobrain success story
Avoid KPIs that are too generic or compliance-oriented
Management benchmarks such as the completion rate during annual interview campaigns or the number of training courses taken per employee are certainly useful... but they say nothing about the dynamic of skills in the company. To set up a crop, indicators are needed that are:
- Activable by managers and HR;
- Interpretable by collaborators;
- Followed over time and debated.
Ensuring a culture of skills on a daily basis
UA culture of skills is more than standards or tools. It takes shape in the interactions, decisions and practices that punctuate the daily life of teams.
An organization that is mature on this subject shares the same language around skills. It makes them visible, activatable, and recognized in all dimensions of the employee experience. Here are the concrete signs of such maturity:
Regular and personalized training courses
Employees can be trained according to their real needs and aspirations. This involves:
- Diversified formats: e-learning, workshops, mentoring, face-to-face;
- Visible recognition: certifications, badges, public feedback...
Example of promoting training programs at Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance
Les Learning Days involve each employee as an actor in their progress, with the presentation of all continuing education systems including cross-mentoring and internal expertise sharing workshops.
Clear and competency-based career paths
The rules of the game are well known. Mobility or promotion criteria are linked to demonstrated skills — not to seniority or subjective perceptions. This assumes:
- a shared repository;
- transparency in expectations;
- visible opportunities.
Example of a mobility policy at Decathlon
Internal mobility is part of the culture at Decathlon: sharing workshops, evolving paths and learning communities encourage progress.
Valued peer learning
Learning doesn't just come from above. It circulates between colleagues. The company highlights:
- transmission initiatives;
- internal workshops;
- communities of practice.
Example of collective intelligence with Murex
Les Friday dojos allow everyone to present a subject or an achievement to others, reinforcing the culture of sharing and the recognition of internal knowledge.
Collective rituals around skills
Workshops, monthly reviews, or HR—managers—collaborators seminars become places for dialogue on skills:
- What emerging needs?
- What possible trajectories?
- What career paths should you consider?
These moments bring competence to life beyond the annual interview alone.
Example of roots in the discovery of satellite jobs at Orange
Communities of business practices make it possible to combine expertise, innovate, and learn collectively.
Digital tools at the service of activation
Integrated HR platforms (like Neobrain) allow:
- to monitor the development of skills;
- to offer personalized recommendations;
- to manage mobility and routes;
- to offer visibility to employees on their career options.
Example of soft skills development at BlaBlaCar
At the leader in community transport, employees share their expertise, decompartmentalize knowledge and become co-responsible for their progress with a particular emphasis on soft skills.
Setting a clear course... from the management
A culture never spreads as well as when it is embodied at the top of the organization.
When management affirms clear and legible priorities around skills, it gives impetus to all actors in the HR—managers—collaborators chain.
On the other hand, if the course is unclear, efforts are diluted, trade-offs become contradictory, and initiatives lose impact.
Clarifying the criteria for access to management
In many companies, managerial appointments are still based on technical expertise or seniority. But managing a team requires many other qualities: the ability to make others grow, to develop skills, to manage collective performance.
Making visible the importance given to skills
Invoking skills in speeches is not enough. How can skills be given a central place in strategic priorities?
To cultivate competency logic as a priority, we recommend 3 actions:
- Integrate development indicators skills in management committees;
- Relier transformation projects to critical skills maps;
- Faire Witnessing leaders on the importance of skills in their own career.
Investing in interconnected tools
To enable a shared vision, management must promote tools that link HR, managerial and collaborative decisions. This involves:
- the integration of HRIS systems, performance, training and skills management
- accessible interfaces, in everyday tools (such as Teams or Slack);
- platforms capable of conveying concrete signals from the field (training needs, aspirations, tensions, etc.).
Why a culture of skills reinforces HR and manager collaboration
Here is a formula for Benoît Courtin (VP of ANDRH) who we love a lot because she highlights the invisible but structuring dimension of corporate culture.
Culture is what's left when we remove all of our processes.
Applied to skills, this idea takes on a very concrete dimension: a culture of skills is not based solely on tools or standards. It is evident in daily practices, exchanges and decisions taken in the field. This is precisely what strengthens HR and manager collaboration.
When this culture is established: - employees naturally talk about their skills and their areas of improvement;
- Managers identify weak signals, support trajectories and open up opportunities;
- HR is no longer the sole bearer of the subject, but plays a catalytic role.
In other words, skills management is no longer based on a service, but becomes a shared responsibility. Over time, this dynamic is rooted in simple rituals, clarified roles, and regular interactions. It makes it possible to sustainably align HR and managers around the same objective: to develop talent and structure career paths.
Conclusion
In many organizations, cultivating skills is still wishful thinking. We talk about it during kick-offs, we show it in PowerPoints, but in daily exchanges?
It is struggling to exist. However, the first signs are there : a manager who spontaneously mentions soft skills in interviews, an employee who asks for a job advisor, an HR who offers a career review based on real skills, not seniority.
These micro-gestures are not trivial. These are weak signals of change in progress. : that of a gradual alignment between HR and managers, around a shared base. That of a shift in posture, where we go from control to dialogue, from punctual evaluation to Construction continues.
This path is not done alone. It requires adapted tools, concrete rituals, but above all a collective will: That of putting skills back at the heart of sustainable performance.
What if, tomorrow, we measured the success of an organization not only by its results... but by the way in which it develops its talents?
