Article written by Chris Carey
It is alarming to read, in a recent Gallup report, that workforce engagement has declined for the fourth year running. Even more concerning is that the steepest drop in engagement is among the management population.
I think these two workplace engagement trends are clearly linked, and given the critical role managers play as the ‘trusted translator’ between leadership and colleagues on the frontline, we simply have to reverse the decline for organisations to deliver success.
In this blog, I share some of the challenges middle managers face in today’s landscape and offer some practical recommendations to overcome them. Surely, if we can inspire, excite, and equip this important population, they will, in turn, engage the wider workforce more effectively.
Middle management matters
Research has been telling us for decades that colleagues see their managers as a trusted source of information, more so than senior leaders. And, of course, they also have more contact with colleagues, compared to leaders.
Middle managers:
- Play a central role in shaping the actual culture in their part of the organisation, more so than any leadership speech or corporate video ever could.
- Are often the reason a colleague joins a business or chooses to stay. They are also often the reason people leave.
- Have an important role to play in ensuring the wellbeing of their workforce and are often the first people colleagues turn to when things start to go off track.
- Are best placed to motivate their direct reports and drive the performance of the teams they lead.
- Will frequently be the role models that high-potential talent looks up to and emulates.
- Play a crucial role in translating corporate strategies into day-to-day activities at the coalface. Senior leaders may set the direction of travel for the business, but middle managers are the ones with the ‘Strat Nav’ who guide their teams’ actions to get there.
We ignore the needs of the middle-management population at our peril. So, what is going on in their world, what are the challenges of middle managers and what is causing the decline in engagement?
How the workplace has changed for middle managers
I’ve often heard the term ‘the frozen middle’ applied to this layer of an organisation. In fact, I think the heat is really on this population today, perhaps more so than ever before:
- Managers are increasingly being tasked with delivering more with less, amid recruitment freezes, headcount reductions, or open posts which are no longer being filled.
- They are the emotional shock absorbers between demands for ever-greater efficiency from above and a workforce below them calling for greater levels of flexibility, empathy and support.
- The adoption of AI and digital tools is outpacing company policy, so managers are often asked by their workforce about job security, and they don’t know what to say.
- Frequent shifts in strategy, often driven by external factors and poorly explained, are leaving managers muddled about what to prioritise and what not to.
- Managers report being asked to communicate and implement decisions they had no part in shaping, despite feeling they could have helped make them better, if only they were asked.
- Leaders are demanding line managers spend more time coaching the performance of their staff up, or out, whilst also asking them to undertake ever more administrative tasks.
- The rising demand from colleagues for home working is often at odds with mandatory office attendance dictated by senior leaders. And guess who’s stuck in the middle!
- Managers are now asked to coach their people to deliver success and support their wellbeing, but fewer than half in a recent survey felt they had the tools and training to do so.
- Middle managers are often described as an ‘overhead’ cost, which drives feelings of job insecurity and lowers morale in the very people we need to motivate their teams.
- Managers are now reporting lower levels of wellbeing, compared to the people they lead, higher levels of stress and increased loneliness. Middle manager burnout really is an issue.
Little wonder then that middle management engagement is in decline.
And the news gets worse. Gallup reports that 70% of team engagement is determined by the manager and points to a ripple effect that reduces performance, increases employee turnover, and harms organisational health.
Disengaged managers are a key factor in the decline of employee engagement.
I think we need to act now, before the ripple effect becomes a tidal wave and drowns entire organisations.
How are disengaged middle managers affecting organisations?
It is with a sinking feeling that we have to face some uncomfortable facts.
Disengaged managers fail to provide a clear sense of direction or reasons to believe for their people. They create a negative mood in the workplace, possibly even a toxic culture. Colleagues who are performing well are not recognised, causing them to resign, or worse still, resign but stay.
Disengaged managers do not get behind corporate strategies or bring them to life. Productivity plummets on their watch, decision-making slows, trust is eroded, and psychological safety suffers. They spend less time coaching colleagues and model behaviours that cause the talent pipeline to tank.
Disengaged managers stifle creativity. Innovation, the lifeblood of any organisation responding to a changing world, is negatively impacted. Colleagues feel less inclined to offer suggestions for improvement, and resistance to change goes up, just when you needed that least.
Disengaged managers may leave your organisation, taking their experience and expertise with them. You may not mourn their passing, but they leave you with a vacuum that typically costs 50 to 200% of their salary to fill.
How to turn disengaged managers into infectious advocates for success
So, what can leadership do to re-engage middle managers? Plenty, I would say. And we need to do it now, before the disengagement virus infects your entire organisation.
Of course, clear career paths, competitive compensation and wellbeing packages have a role to play. In addition, here are five proven leadership strategies for engagement, based on activities we’ve put in place over the years and that I’ve witnessed working firsthand.
1. Involve managers early and often
Involve middle managers (and emerging talent too) early in your decision-making processes. Listen to and demonstrably act on their insights on how best to action your plans. Who knows better how to do things at the sharp end of execution?
I appreciate that you can’t always involve everyone, so pick managers who are real internal influencers and clearly communicate to the entire business who is involved and what their role is.
We’ve had great success with this approach, often calling these groups of people ‘Action Squads’ or ‘Sounding Boards’. We equip them with the skills they need to thrive in their roles, such as ‘How to harness the power of storytelling‘, ‘How to build rapport’, and ‘How to create psychological safety’.
Give them the kudos when they help make great things happen, resisting the temptation to steal their thunder.
2. Be clear about the role of a modern manager
This is a fast-changing world, and the role of middle managers needs to evolve to keep pace.
Start by explaining why you want your managers to work in new ways before you tell them what you want them to do differently.
I think the role of a modern middle manager includes being the ‘bridge’ between leaders and the workforce, translating strategy into concrete actions that colleagues can readily understand and implement.
Give your managers more autonomy and freedom to act, within a framework, of course. Empower them to make decisions without always having to run them by leaders.
Encourage them to coach and mentor their colleagues. And be equally clear about what you do not want your managers spending their time on, so they actually have the time to coach. (Current research tells us managers spend less than a third of their time on people management.)
Put in place safe mechanisms through which managers can share their concerns, speak the truth to power, and offer recommendations for improvement, without fear of repercussions. How can managers create an environment of psychological safety if they don’t feel safe themselves?
3. Invest in tailored development for your managers
Some people have been appointed to the role of manager because they were really good at their old role. For example, being a brilliant salesperson doesn’t always translate to being a great manager, unless the management development fairy tapped them on the shoulder the night before their promotion!
In any event, the role of the manager has evolved, so people need the skills, mindset and confidence to thrive in it.
Why not create and publicise a prospectus of management development activities for your colleagues to call upon?
Your ‘Sounding Board’ could help you prioritise what to include, but whatever you do, make sure the content is practical, pragmatic, relevant and relatable.
We’ve developed and successfully delivered over 60 skills development activities at Axiom. The most popular ones among managers include coaching, listening, motivation, online presentation, and negotiation skills.
You could also put in place mentoring programmes, reverse mentoring programmes and job swaps between HQ leaders and managers. The latter is especially powerful in building mutual understanding and empathy in a world where only 36% of managers report trusting their leaders.
Support groups, through which middle managers share experiences and co-create solutions to common challenges, increase collaboration and reduce feelings of loneliness, are becoming increasingly popular.
4. Free up middle managers’ time, so they can actually manage
Leave the admin to administrators. Automate as much as you can. AI has immense potential to reduce the burden.
Reduce the number of meetings you ask middle managers to attend – and don’t expect them to feel inspired by a session called ‘Update’!
Put 15-minute ‘stand-ups’ or check-ins in place and be super clear about the benefits of attending.
Stop asking for reports on so many matters, often with unachievable deadlines. Coordinate information requests at the HQ level. We recently tasked an ‘Action Squad’ with streamlining these requests, or even stopping them at busy times of the year for the business. They were empowered to walk into a Board meeting in full flight if they thought someone at HQ had lost the plot.
Help managers ruthlessly prioritise what really matters through clear, consistent and compelling communication.
5. Make it easy for managers to communicate a clear sense of direction and be a role model
Managers will always have a natural passion for strategies and decisions they helped shape, but as we have discussed, that can’t happen all the time, especially in large organisations.
As we have also discussed, colleagues look to their manager as a trusted source of information.
It is therefore critical that we make it really easy for managers to communicate effectively with their teams. That means providing them with user-friendly communication materials, written in plain English, and helpful discussion guides to increase interactivity and engagement.
They will also thank you for great supporting graphics, FAQs and clear escalation processes in case they are asked to tackle a topic they are not comfortable addressing. We’d all rather they ‘flag’ an issue rather than ‘blag’ their way through things!
Helping managers communicate clearly and compellingly helps them serve as role models for those around them. And leaders can go much further by publicly recognising the crucial contribution managers make to the business’s success.
If we follow the maxim ‘Energy flows where attention goes’, then listening properly to the management population, acting on their ideas wherever possible, and giving them the credit they deserve, has to be the right approach.
Your potential managers of tomorrow will also see what great looks like and colleagues will be proud to work with such a good manager.
Putting it all together – Axiom in action
A leading provider in the medical market needed to inspire the entire workforce, globally, to get behind a new strategy in a highly competitive environment – and quickly.
That would be challenging enough on its own, but it was made even more difficult by the fact that the organisation had gone through wave after wave of change over many years, some of which stuck, much of which didn’t. Countries and functions were run like mini-fiefdoms, and there was significant distrust of HQ initiatives.
Against this background, the management population, quite understandably, were simply carrying on doing what they had always done before. Hardly a recipe for success in driving a major change.
Yet, according to employee opinion survey research, these managers were well respected by their direct reports. They were clearly going to be a tremendous asset if there was a way to harness their contribution.
We began by forming a Sounding Board comprising c. 30 informally influential managers, high-potential talent, and representatives from HQ functions, from all around the world. We gave them a clearly defined role in shaping our approach to global engagement and helping to make our communications as cynic-proof as possible.
We raised their profile internationally and equipped them with the skills they needed to represent and positively influence their communities.
Next, they helped us sense-check the engagement campaign we were planning. Their role was to pressure-test our thinking. We literally asked them to try to ‘break’ our planned activities and put them back together in better shape.
To achieve the required results, we needed to deliver a step change in the way we communicated the new strategy. Once again, the managers on the Sounding Board stepped up to help.
Together, we created a high-impact communication pack consisting of a visual metaphor, speaker notes, interactive exercises, memorabilia, FAQs, and escalation processes, just in case – all delivered in multiple languages.
And the Sounding Board members helped us equip and inspire a group of super-users who would bring our communications to life all around the world.
The results were really positive. The Employee Opinion Survey showed that colleagues had a consistently high understanding of the strategy and their role in delivering it. Their opinions of their managers improved still further, and trust in HQ initiatives and senior leaders also improved markedly.
Most importantly, business performance improved on an ongoing basis.
Reversing the decline in manager engagement – the numbers add up
The correlation between upper-quartile engagement scores and business performance has been demonstrated time and again. The numbers add up. Profitability increases by 20-25%. Productivity increases by 15-20%. Customer satisfaction and loyalty go up. Staff turnover goes down, absenteeism reduces and we get fewer safety incidents.
Better engagement is clearly a prize worth fighting for, and the primary drivers of that are your managers. If you overlook their importance, you will be looking over a decline in business performance. Treat them in a way that reflects the highly influential asset they clearly are, and you can watch your business thrive.
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