‘Glue holding everything together’: The rise and return of the middle manager
“All these companies move into this hybrid work environment and [are] struggling … People do not want to come in. So suddenly, those middle managers become very important.”
Anseel regularly receives requests from CEOs to speak about how to “bring back the vibe and energy,” he says. “A lot of CEOs [are] struggling to think: how do we bring back our culture, our connections, our cohesion or sense of belonging?”
In a jobs market so tight that employers are poaching workers from rivals, a poor manager can make or break an employee’s decision to stay or leave, making them one of the “missing pieces” in the war-for-talent “puzzle”, Anseel says.
But standing in the way may be a lingering perception problem. “We’ll still need to work a bit on their image.”
Unsupported and in demand
Anseel quotes the adage “people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses”, which Australian HR Institute chief Sarah McCann also raises. McCann says middle managers need greater resources to do their jobs, which have been made more difficult by the pandemic.
“I don’t think organisations always give sufficient credit to the middle managers and don’t support middle managers sufficiently,” McCann says. “They need themselves to be mentored and trained, they need to be encouraged to be more autonomous. It’s critical that middle managers have changed their management skills as the external and organisation environment changes faster and faster.”
Supervisors have never had to manage remote teams to the degree they are expected to do now. They are also expected to nurture staff members’ digital communication, resilience and wellbeing while taking care of their own.
“In a pre-COVID world, you could get a feeling of how your team member was coping, whether there were any issues, whether they were just languishing. But that’s a lot harder to see in a hybrid or remote workforce.”
One way to offer line managers support, McCann suggests, is to let them have ‘skip meetings’ with their manager’s superior. “It’s a good way to get middle managers to buy into decisions because they’ll be able to hear and understand strategic purpose more clearly.”
The HR Institute chief acknowledges that there is increasing awareness among company leaders of the need to upskill and provide more management capability training to employees.
“Is it sufficient across the board? No.”
In today’s candidate-driven jobs market, Dineen warns that company culture is at risk of suffering further as more middle managers think about jumping ship.
“There’s a higher quantity of their roles out in the market at the moment.
“There’s more of a demand for them … so they have more choice, and then it pushes their bargaining power when looking for a new role.”
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