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If your employer wants to promote you into middle management, run for the hills. At least if you believe that companies like Meta, LinkedIn and Google are onto something as they eliminate middle managers from their payrolls in the name of "efficiencies." Chances are, they are making a big mistake according to research by respected experts on the future of work. More on this later. Let’s look at what the employers making the layoffs were thinking first.
Management, the Great Agility Blocker?
“We are also removing layers, reducing management roles and broadening responsibilities to make decisions more quickly,” LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky wrote to employees in May when he announced that the company was making changes to the “Global Business Organization (GBO) and our China strategy that will result in a reduction of roles for 716 employees.”
In February and March, Meta made announcements regarding further layoffs which involved the elimination of certain middle management roles. Additionally, some Meta managers were requested to transition back to individual contributor roles instead of their previous responsibilities of overseeing other employees.
Not to be outdone by its neighbors, Google let go 12,000 employees earlier this year, many of them people whose bosses were never consulted. “We have over 30,000 managers at Google and to consult with all of them would have made this an open process where it would have taken additional weeks or even months to come to a decision,” said Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, at a meeting with remaining employees. “We wanted to get certainty sooner.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk reportedly answered the question, “Elon, what’s the one thing that’s most messed up at Twitter right now?” with “There seem to be 10 people ‘managing’ for every one person coding.”
It’s not only tech companies that are cutting managers. FedEx reduced the size of its management team by more than 10% and consolidated some teams and functions. “Unfortunately, this was a necessary action to become a more efficient, agile organization," wrote CEO Raj Subramaniam in a letter to employees last February.
Related Article: The Boomerang Manager
What a Difference a Good Manager Makes
All of this could not be happening at a worse time. According to Gallup, only 35% of employees are engaged in their work in 2023. Not only that, but a survey conducted by Monster.com earlier this year revealed that 96% of workers are looking for a new position largely in search of better pay. The survey also found that 40% of job seekers said they need a higher income due to inflation and rising expenses. Others said they have no room to grow in their current role or that they are in a toxic workplace. Employees need to work with someone who knows their work in order to have the discussions needed to affect change.
The question in front of companies is: who are employees supposed to go to if they don’t have a relationship with a manager they know and trust? The vice president of finance? The CEO? Or someone else in a C-level role who wouldn’t recognize them if they were both sitting in a restaurant lobby waiting to be seated?
“Managers know their workers. They know their names, what they are working on, their strengths and development needs, their career path and how to position them for success," said Bryan Hancock, a partner and global leader of McKinsey’s talent management practice. He and fellow McKinsey partners Emily Field and Bill Schaninger co-wrote "Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work." “Managers are sense makers, the coaches who bring individual and organizational goals into line for success,” Hancock added.
The Workforce Institute at UKG, an HCM and workforce management solutions provider, conducted a survey of 3400 employees across 10 countries in January 2023. The resulting report said that managers have a greater impact on employee mental health than doctors and therapists and an equal impact as their spouses and partners.
“People managers are often the first line of defense for struggling employees,” wrote Tanya Eckert, the report’s author. Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup's workplace-management practice, had something to say that applies to all workers, across the board. “If you want to achieve your goals, you need managers who can create a culture that supports your vision and strategy,” he said.
Related Article: How to Drive Manager Effectiveness
Underappreciation of Managers Is Nothing New
Middle managers have been underappreciated since the 1990s, according to Hancock. Why? The narrative from the C-suite has been, “Why do we need them (middle managers) if we can communicate with employees directly?”
The leaders making statements like this ought to think again, unless they plan to personally coach each employee on how they can both move closer to achieving their career goals and serve the company at the same time. Not only that, but they must also manage their performance in a way that motivates each individual and have meaningful, personal discussions several times each year.
Despite enduring underappreciation and prolonged assault on their roles, middle managers are even more important amidst a backdrop of economic uncertainty, the challenges posed by crises like the pandemic, ongoing issues of attrition, hybrid working arrangements and more. “Organizations should allow managers time to focus on their people, otherwise they risk breaks in their talent pipelines and strategic plans. Time is a nonrenewable resource, and organizations that rethink how managers spend their time will better set up their managers to succeed,” wrote Hancock and his coauthors.
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And, of course, for that to happen, companies need to employ the right number of managers to understand how, when and where work should be done; to set up guardrails and policies to avoid unintended consequences, and to do all they can to ensure that employers and employees thrive in the new world of work.
