Someone in the UK working for a poor or fair manager is five times more likely to leave than someone working for an excellent one. Replacing each of them costs £25,000 to £30,000. Three departures is seventy-five to ninety thousand pounds, spent quietly, before anyone adds it up.
Meanwhile 82% of UK managers step into the role with no formal management training, and 58% say they would rather not lead people at all — caught between pressure from above and a team below that won't tell them straight.
The people who know how a manager is doing are the last people who'll say it to their face. That's the gap.
Not a score out of ten, and not advice that could apply to anyone. Vela cites the exact exchange, so there's nothing to argue with and something concrete to change.
Twenty managers sit through the same course on the same day, and nobody finds out whether it worked. Vela builds each exercise from what actually happened in that manager's own conversations, then counts whether the habit stopped.
No integrations, no course to sit through, no rollout project. A manager pastes a transcript after their 1:1 and the loop starts.
A transcript from Zoom, Meet or Otter, or typed-up notes. Takes a minute.
After a few sessions Vela shows what keeps repeating, with the moments quoted. A habit, with evidence — not a score.
Vela writes a practice scenario from that manager's own pattern. They rehearse the exact moment they keep getting wrong, rather than sitting through a course built for everyone.
Every later session is checked for the same habit, and you see whether it's happening less.
Find the habit. Practise it. Prove it stopped.
Habits that show up across sessions, not one-off moments — each one carrying the exchanges that evidence it. A pattern seen four times is worth acting on. A single bad day isn't.
You define the values. Vela checks each 1:1 against them and tells you where they showed up, where they were missed, and where there wasn't enough in the conversation to judge either way.
Team planEvery exercise a manager completes is checked against their later 1:1s. Not a completion rate — whether the behaviour it was built for actually changed.
Direct reports can share private feedback after any 1:1. It shapes what the next report pays attention to, and none of it is ever shown to the manager.
An administrator sees who's using Vela and how often. They never see a manager's reports, scores or transcripts.
Nothing a direct report writes reaches their manager — not quoted, not paraphrased, not confirmed. Asked directly, Vela will neither confirm nor deny.
Vela's output is coaching feedback. Our terms prohibit its use in pay, promotion or disciplinary decisions.
This is enforced in how Vela is built, not only promised here. An automated test suite checks every change for leakage before it ships.
Try it free on a real 1:1. Set your team up yourself in minutes — no seat minimum, cancel any time.
Whether you're a manager with a question or looking to bring Vela to your whole team, drop us a line.