The crucial value of middle management

Arne Sjöström at Culture Amp explains how middle managers can help UK firms escape survival mode

 

Company leaders relied heavily on their middle managers to keep services going in the pandemic and the geopolitical upheavals that followed. But now, there is near-recession in the UK, with ONS data showing that seven out of ten UK businesses are concerned about their future, and more than half of workers saying their work is becoming more demanding.

 

Many UK firms remain in survival mode. To sustain productivity and profitability, their leaders must ask their middle managers to do it all again.  

 

Enabling middle managers

In these testing economic times, senior executives have little scope or budget to invest and expand in their organisation. In addition, many workforces may be struggling with their wellbeing or have simply lost faith in their company’s mission after three years’ upending of working arrangements and lasting uncertainty over their organisation’s costs, supply chains, and their business’s sustainability.  

 

With meaningful HR investment off the agenda in 2023, company leaders need to find new ways to equip their middle managers to make the most of their teams’ resources and employees’ capabilities to deliver a step change in workforce engagement and performance. 

 

Creative and game-changing initiatives from middle managers - including better supporting their direct reports’ personal growth, refocusing and upskilling under-performing teams - are crucial to harnessing team talents and rebuilding employees’ trust in the company vision.

 

This cohesion is in short supply generally: a PWC global workforce survey found only around one in three (35%) of respondents reckoned their manager tolerated small-scale failures, and just 33% said their manager encouraged dissent and debate. 

 

There are three strategies for achieving these changes that need not require investment but some fresh thinking and careful planning: showing vulnerability, rebuilding faith in the mission, and re-engaging with employees.

 

Showing vulnerability

First, line managers need to lead by showing greater vulnerability, humanity, and empathy. Managers that put aside the usual top-down workforce power dynamics and show vulnerability open the door to their direct reports and teams doing the same and creating a common bond between team members. 

 

Managers admitting greater openness and vulnerability, even at times when the organisation is struggling, quickly help create a closer sense of trust between management and their teams to tackle demanding or changing workloads. And data prove it: employees in high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity and 76% more engagement. 

 

Rebuilding faith in the mission

Second, senior leaders and managers alike need to be attuned to their teams’ fears and not flinch from having difficult conversations. Such transparency permits greater input from employees into team problem-solving, unlocks employees’ ideas and delivers more team creativity. 

 

Leaders and managers that are brave and use practical tactics like Ask Me Anything meetings, or a dedicated Slack channel for their teams’ questions, or set up a new, all-hands weekly update, will open up conversations with their direct reports that identify out of the box thinking or deliver new insights to help move the company forward.

 

Most of all, managers’ willingness to get down to brass tacks and talk about performance or other issues will rebuild their teams’ trust and belief in the mission. 

 

Re-engaging with employees

Third, re-engaging and coaching employees week-by-week can change the game on performance. Line managers that carve out time in their work schedules for regular, structured one-to-one meetings with their direct reports will better address teams’ challenges and open up a series of possibilities such as opportunities for targeted, one-to-one skills coaching. 

 

A structured approach can’t be undertaken lightly: it demands that manager and employee jointly own these meetings; that both people need to make time for self-reflection on key priorities ahead of each session; and ensure they have those necessary but difficult conversations that might otherwise be put off in the usual hurly-burly of daily meetings. 

 

Re-engaging direct reports will create the conditions for improved performance. A Culture Amp analysis of more than 2000 companies found that employees attending structured 1:1 meetings with their line managers at least once a fortnight are 28% less likely to leave in a given year than those receiving no such 1:1 sessions.

 

In addition, those employees that receive carefully structured sessions are 45% less likely to leave in a given year than those that do not. 

 

Middle managers can show the way

Managers that take fresh approaches to development and engaging employees will meet different age groups’ upskilling needs (e.g. Generation Z wants to be back in the office to observe and learn, millennials want to WFH but need competency training, etc.) and will help boost company performance.

 

Despite there being no money in the HR investment pot, middle managers are once again the key to companies’ survival and growth in 2023.

 

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Arne Sjöström is Lead People Scientist at Culture Amp

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com