While the role of the manager has long been deemed aspirational, it’s becoming increasingly disparaged, particularly by younger generations of employees, who aspire to greater autonomy in the workplace and resent any attempt at micromanagement.
This is prompting employers to question the purpose of some managerial staff.
This phenomenon is particularly evident in the United States, where middle managers accounted for almost a third of layoffs last year, Bloomberg reports. In comparison, they accounted for just 20% of dismissals in 2018.
In recent years, companies such as Meta, UPS and Citigroup have eliminated a large number of managerial positions, giving rise to what is being dubbed “the great unbossing”. While these layoffs are part of a drive to cut costs, they also reflect a rethinking of the role of managers in the hierarchical structure.
“I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, told his employees last year.
Zuckerberg is not alone in his desire to make companies more agile by drastically reducing, or even eliminating, middle management: many are questioning the role of these managers.
In theory, middle managers maintain direct contact with a team of employees, while also shaping a company’s strategic vision. In practice, however, many are content to simply oversee the output of their subordinates. Junior profiles, in particular, suffer from this approach, which they perceive as micromanagement.
“There’s evidence to suggest that micromanaging juniors is not productive and limits people’s learning potential. The most effective team development is when people are given autonomy and the freedom to fail,” says Sophie O’Brien, a Gen-Z hiring expert and the founder of the recruitment agency Pollen Careers, speaking to Business Insider.
Rethinking the role
Indeed, failure can be instructive: it pushes us to look for solutions and, therefore, to be creative, learning from our mistakes. That’s why it’s important for managers to recognise their employees’ right to get things wrong, especially those with less experience.
O’Brien told Business Insider that micromanagers can have a “detrimental impact” on Gen Z workers and their productivity: “It can cause them to feel demotivated, doubt or second-guess themselves, and make them disengage from their work. Because if their ideas or work is constantly being rehashed or rejected, they’ll naturally lose interest in their role,” she said.
But they may also lose interest in the idea of becoming a manager; indeed, many do not want to hold a position of responsibility during their career. The figures speak for themselves: 62% of the 1,000 full-time US employees polled for a Visier survey don’t dream of being promoted to a managerial role.
In this context, you might expect this function to disappear over time, especially in an AI-powered world of work. Many managers fear that the deployment of AI tools in business will make them obsolete: two-thirds of Americans in such roles are afraid the technology will cost them their jobs, according to a survey by the Beautiful.ai platform.
But managers’ duties are not limited to reporting or administrative management – two tasks that can easily be automated. Above all, they must help their staff produce the best possible work while ensuring their wellbeing – tasks a machine can’t perform.
“The job of a manager is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance,” English motivational speaker Marcus Buckingham wrote in the Harvard Business Review. “Managers will succeed only when they can identify and deploy the differences among people, challenging each employee to excel in his or her own way.”
That’s why managers still have an essential role to play in companies, despite what proponents of “the great unbossing” may say. However, their superiors need to value and support them more so they can flourish in their role.