What is Line Manager?

Line manager is a person or employee of an organization who directly supervises one or more employees and is in charge of all the individuals working in the same or different department. The line manager reports to the person in a position ranking higher to him. Line manager is very much proficient functionally.

A line manager is an employee who directly manages other employees of the organization and is accountable for the administrative management work and its functional management which directly contributes to the output of the production plant. If we consider a corporate hierarchy, a line manager holds the authority in a vertical chain of command or over a particular product line. They can be team leads, supervisors or managers.

Importance of Line Managers

The concept holds great importance in all the organizations. He is the one who aligns the organization goals with that of various strategies. The specific departmental as well functional goals are strategized by him. He is responsible for accumulating and allotting proper resources for the organization. He is responsible for preparing the performance metrics of the employees, which is a mandatory thing to assess the organizations’ productivity levels and development. He is always in contact with the employees and also with various other line managers to keep a track of all the functional departmental workings. He plays a very major role in an organization when it comes to team work and team management skills impart programs.

He is skilled in collaborating with people. As he works simultaneously with all other teams and plays an important role in taking decisions, he has an in depth knowledge about all the functions of all the departments present in an organization. So he always has more chances of getting promotions and is a boon to the organization in times of crisis. They ensure that timely the decisions are taken and customers are given due importance while taking any important decision. They help in attaining customer satisfaction to the organization by implementing actions as and when required. Other managers are staff managers, personnel managers, interim managers etc.

Line manager is the manager to whom teams or individuals directly report to and have higher responsibility in the organization. Managers like project managers are responsible to direct work to other employees, but they are not responsible for any of the administrative management. They are not involved in the discipline, salary adjustments, promotion/demotion of the employees, although their feedbacks are considered very crucial. He is aware of all the nooks and hooks of a department. He is well aware of the necessities of a department and works according to that. A HR manager is also a line manager. He handles all the employee related issues in the human resource department. He is responsible for following the man power requirements in an organization. He recruits people and helps in training and guiding them. He is not the one who does everything solely, as the name suggests “manager”, he makes every issue of an employee visible and facilitates the process through various other professionals.

Responsibilities of Line Managers

Some of the individuals have manager in their designation or position but they don’t really manage any other employee, these managers are also not line managers. Responsibility for the risk management is often in hands of the line managers. The line managers are also increasingly being assigned the human resource obligations. The line managers are supposed to report to the higher level of management on the well being and performance of the employees or the teams that are managed by them.

Usually the responsibilities carried out by the line managers are as follows:-

1. Dealing with the clients and customers of the organization.

2. Regular measurement of the operational performance.

3. Efficient management of the organization’s operational costs.

4. Providing employees/workers technical expertise and skills.

5. People management on a daily basis with least idle time.

6. Allocating all the employees/workers their work and rotas.

7. Thorough monitoring of the work and regular checking of the quality of product and services.

8. Responsible to adopt organizational cultural change.

9. Team building, mentoring and motivating the employees help accomplish the organizational goals.

Difference Between Line Manager & Project Manager

A line manager can be confused with any other type of manager say for instance with a project manager. Many of us are not aware about the different types of managers that are present in an organization. But mangers are of various types and they have defines roles.

For instance, a project manager, he handles a particular project and the project team for him changes as soon as the project changes. But line manager always has a fixed set of employees under him, it’s a permanent one not as temporary as a project manager.

Example of Line Managers

HR manger is also a line manager. He has many duties. He is responsible for the talent acquisition of the organization. He is responsible for the after recruitment and selection procedures. Employees’ engagement and motivation duties come under him. He needs to evaluate the performance of the teams, and respond them back with proper suggestions. He has to align with other managers for proper functioning of the organization. Employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction both come under his ambit as a line manager. He is responsible for getting the feedback from the customers and implementing proper actions to deliver customer satisfaction and accomplish organization goals.

Hence, this concludes the definition of Line Manager along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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