Workplace expert Erica Keswin breaks down why companies suffer when their middle managers are neglected.
You may want to check in on your boss. A survey released this year found that compared to other office workers, mid-level managers are reporting the highest levels of anxiety and the worst work-life balance.
“When they’re feeling pressure from all sides — and who isn’t these days?! — it’s no wonder so many managers are feeling burned out and stressed out,” workplace strategist Erica Keswin writes in her new book, The Retention Revolution. In the following excerpt, Keswin explores the plight of the middle manager, including why these often-unappreciated employees should really be considered every organization’s MVPs, and what companies can do to lift them up.
You’ve probably heard the oft-quoted 2015 Gallup gospel: “People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” But today, that’s not just an important idea to keep in mind, it’s a make-or-break truth. A 2022 GoodHire survey of 3,000 Americans found that “82 percent of American workers said they would potentially quit their job because of a bad manager.”
Managers are always important, but in the Retention Revolution, they’re your MVP.
Unfortunately, as recent headlines highlight the difficulty of this important role (“The Plight of the Middle Manager,” “The Middle Managers Are Not Alright,” “Why Middle Managers Are Feeling the Squeeze and How to Fix It,” “How Flexibility Made Managers Miserable,” “No One Wants to Be a Middle Manager Anymore”), it makes sense that talented people might want to skip right over this step on the corporate ladder.
As Denise Rousseau, professor of organizational behavior and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, points out, “The name gives it away: Middle managers are caught in the middle, and they have to deal with issues up and down an organization.” When they’re feeling pressure from all sides — and who isn’t these days?! — it’s no wonder so many managers are feeling burned out and stressed out.
Research from Slack’s Future Forum confirms that a whopping 43 percent of middle managers are “at high risk for burnout.” And in Gallup chairman Jim Clifton’s book It’s the Manager, he notes that “Managers report more stress and burnout, worse work-life balance, and worse physical well-being than the individual contributors on the teams they lead.”
These days managers are being relied upon even more by their direct reports, which is yet another reason why their well-being is so central to the health and well-being of your organization. Nowadays, nearly 70 percent of people say their manager had “the greatest impact on their mental health, on par with the impact of their partner.”
In fact, a Salesforce survey found that “employees rate their immediate supervisor as most important to understanding the organization and its priorities, above the executive team.” And as Cara Allamano, chief people officer at Lattice, explains, “[The manager’s] job has become even more important in the last two to three years because they truly are that connection between the broader business, the broader organization, the broader culture, and individuals who want to do a good job in their work.”
The impact of the manager is broad, yes, but it is also a laser-focused solution for the problem of retention. In one Gallup study, “52 percent of voluntarily exiting employees say their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving their job.” That’s a huge percentage of people who could’ve been retained had there been regular, ongoing conversations about their employee experience.
Which is to say that training your managers has an exponential effect. As individual contributors, managers have an outsized impact on the state of your workforce, so you’d be wise to focus on their training and feedback in order to keep your company healthy.
Also, to state the (perhaps) obvious, managers are employees, too. In other words, in the Retention Revolution, managers are really having a moment, and you should do everything you can to help them lead others and themselves well.
Your company’s success depends on it.
Elevate and Celebrate
In my many years of research on the human workplace, especially during turbulent times, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of shifts in perception. Of course, we need programs, procedures, and protocols. The rubber definitely needs to meet the road. But until we know what we value and why we value it, our actions won’t have the impact we hope they will.
This has never been more true than it is with the role of the manager.
As the very definition of work and the employee journey shifts, this is the time to reevaluate and reestablish the role of the manager in your organization.
What does this mean?
It means that instead of just plugging people into this incredibly important position because they’re so good at their day job (e.g., the salesperson who is so good at selling that she gets promoted to sales manager), or because there’s a vacancy and they’re available, everyone will benefit when you take the role of the manager seriously.
You do this by elevating and then celebrating.
First of all, you want your managers’ programs to be a thing. I’m sure you’re already offering something for your new (and existing) managers, but my guess is that it’s not enough. I encourage you to take a good look at the process of becoming a manager in your organization and elevate it. Give it a name and a real, professional process. Create a cool, branded experience that aligns with the mission of the company, and then shout it from the rooftops. Don’t be shy.
The next thing you’ll want to do is celebrate the role. One of the main ways to do this is by creating community (It’s hard to celebrate alone, right?) Again, I’m guessing you already have a Slack channel or similar way to bring new managers together, but I think you’ll be very happy to see what happens when you elevate that, too, into a full-blown community experience. There’s nothing better than learning with a truly connected cohort that moves together through the elevated experience of becoming amazing managers.
