Summary: People don’t want to be managers anymore. From burnout and overwhelm to lack of support, the role has become unappealing. It’s time to take a step back, rethink what the role is for and address the management design issue.
The laundry list for managers is full. Piled high. For years, organisations have laid every new workplace challenge at managers’ doors – and the responsibility is wearing thin.
Stronger employee engagement? Better wellbeing support? Culture change, performance improvement, strategy communication, retention, inclusion, communication … the list goes on.
The result is a role that has expanded far beyond its original remit.
Managers have become the buffer, expected to handle impact while keeping teams moving forwards – often all at once as the road gets bumpier. And employees are watching.
What happens when managers absorb organisational overflow
Our latest research suggests the consequences are becoming difficult to ignore.
Only 15 per cent of non-managers say becoming a people manager looks appealing, while nearly two-thirds say it does not.
This isn’t about a lack of ambition. Employees can see the reality of the role and the stress outweighs the rewards.
Our research found that 27% of managers today now carry 10 or more day-to-day responsibilities in their role.
What employees see in practice is constant trade-offs, context-switching and emotional labour without the time, clarity or support to do it well.
Pressure and burnout are longstanding topics in HR and management. But the issue now runs deeper than manager wellbeing alone.
Organisations are creating a management pipeline problem of their own making.
Managers have become the buffer, expected to handle impact while keeping teams moving forwards
The emerging succession risk
Stepping into a managerial role has traditionally been viewed as progression. This was reinforced by the expansion of managerial layers in post-war Britain. But many employees no longer see it as a role that conveys prestige and power.
Employees today are seeing managers in a continuously expanding role, where autonomy, support and empowerment do not keep pace.
Becoming part of the ‘squeezed middle’, carrying organisational pressure from above and handling emotional and operational pressure, is not an attractive proposition for many high performers.
This is starting to create a vicious cycle. As fewer people aspire to move into people management, leadership gaps become harder to fill, and existing managers carry even greater pressure.
Organisations risk continuing to treat this as a wellbeing issue. The role is becoming a succession risk in its current form.
Why more training can’t solve a role design failure
Learning and development are often the default response to management strain. ‘If we just ‘upskill’ managers a little more, then they’ll be all set.’
It turns out that tacking on more leadership programmes, coaching and capability frameworks merely adds to expectations about what a ‘good manager’ should deliver. And our findings suggest this is addressing the wrong problem.
Fewer than one-quarter of managers say they feel fully supported by their organisation, which points to a structural issue. Managers are being asked to operate in roles that aren’t clearly defined or resourced.
Managers say they need practical and structural support. Better systems, clearer priorities and stronger support from senior leadership all rank ahead of additional development or recognition.
Organisations have spent years trying to help managers cope with impossible jobs rather than asking whether the jobs themselves need redesigning.
Tacking on more leadership programmes, coaching and capability frameworks merely adds to expectations about what a ‘good manager’ should deliver
Rethinking what the manager role is for
Too many organisations have blurred the line between leadership and managerial accountability. The role loses coherence when managers become responsible for everything from culture to development and transformation.
This means harder choices about what genuinely belongs within management and what doesn’t. It means redefining priorities, removing responsibilities and treating people leadership as a distinct craft, supported properly rather than as an add-on.
It’s an opportunity to move from ‘do everything’ to ‘lead outcomes’, leveraging technology where possible to automate the administrative burden and seriously questioning whether people leadership and technical delivery sit with the same person in the long run.
Paying closer attention to how employees experience management in practice is a good place to start. Reluctance to step into the role is already signalling a design issue.
People still care about leadership and management. But the role, as currently constructed, is too broad, too ambiguous and too difficult to sustain.
Organisations don’t have a management capability problem. They have a management design problem. Now is the time to take a step back and address it.
Actionable insights
- Use employee insight to understand how management is experienced internally and where the role appears unsustainable.
- Recognise that management attractiveness is now a succession issue, not just a wellbeing issue.
- Stop treating managers as the default solution to every organisational challenge.
- Redefine the manager role around a smaller number of core priorities instead of continuously adding responsibilities.
- Focus on improving the context and backdrop eg. systems, clarity and organisational support, rather than relying solely on management development programmes.
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