Nearly half of employees in Australia and New Zealand (48 per cent) are experiencing daily workplace stress, according to recent research from Gallup. 

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2024 report revealed that stress levels in Australia and New Zealand are 17 per cent higher than than the global average. What’s more, just a quarter of employees in this region report feeling engaged at work. Around two thirds (64 per cent) are passively disengaged, while 11 per cent are actively disengaged – i.e., taking actions that directly harm or obstruct the organisation.

“When people are stressed and disengaged, at best, they’re ambivalent, and at worst, they’re actively working against the organisation’s goals,” says Claire de Carteret, Managing Director, APAC at Gallup.

“That can have an impact on customers. It can have an impact on [the employee’s] own feelings of efficacy. And it can even go so far as to impact their physical health.”

Below, de Carteret offers research-backed advice for HR and managers to address workplace stress in the short, medium and long term. 

Short-term strategy: Intervene with the right questions

Short-term exposure to stress at work is unlikely to do serious damage – in fact, some forms of temporary stress have been shown to benefit performance and motivation. However, left unchecked, stress can cause our bodies to be in a constant state of stimulation, increasing the risk of serious harm to our mental and physical health.

In light of employers’ new legal obligations to manage psychosocial hazards at work, it’s particularly crucial for both HR and managers to be vigilant in recognising early signs of stress among employees to address them before they escalate, she says.

According to SafeWork NSW, some of the most common stress symptoms to look out for include: 

• Physical: headaches, tiredness, slow reactions, shortness of breath.
• Mental: difficulty with decision-making, forgetfulness.
• Emotional: irritability, excess worrying, feeling of worthlessness, anxiety, defensiveness, anger, mood swings.
• Behavioural: diminished performance, withdrawal, impulsive behaviour.

Regular, meaningful check-ins with employees are the best way to catch these symptoms early, says de Carteret.

“​They don’t have to be long conversations – just 15 to 30 minutes every week – and then you’ll build a fluency around [that person], which allows you to recognise when someone is struggling.”

To get a well-rounded view of how the employee is feeling and the best ways to support them, you can ask questions such as:

1. Open-ended questions to encourage employees to share their feelings and thoughts in detail.

• How are you feeling at the moment?
• Can you tell me more about what’s been on your mind lately?
• What aspects of your work are you finding stressful?

2. Specific questions to pinpoint particular areas of concern or sources of stress.

• What specific tasks or situations are causing you stress?
• Can you think of any particular moments or events that caused you stress? 
• What was it about that event you found stressful?

3. Supportive questions to show empathy and willingness to help.

• How can I better support you in managing your workload?
• What can we do to make your work environment more comfortable?
• What resources or support do you think would help you manage your stress?

“[These conversations] open up a pathway for the employee to talk about when things are not going right, when they need help, when they’re struggling or when they need time off,” says de Carteret.

When symptoms of stress are identified, interventions should happen promptly to avoid the issue snowballing. Based on employers’ responsibilities under the new psychosocial safety code of practice, WorkSafe Victoria has developed a five-step guide for managers to conduct these short-term interventions: 

1. Make contact. Arrange a confidential meeting time and location and consider what you want to discuss and achieve.

2. Explore the issues. Ask open-ended questions and listen attentively. It’s helpful to state the behaviours you have observed and your concern, and discuss potential factors driving the stress, which could be internal or external.

3. Develop options and offer support. Work together with the employee to explore potential workplace adjustments that could be made to support them, taking into account operational demands. If the employee’s direct manager is the stress source, ensure alternative support is available. Inform them of available resources both in and outside the workplace.

4. Agree on action. Decide on specific steps and agree on follow-up actions and review times.

5. Stay in touch. Follow up regularly, ensuring clear outcomes and agreed follow-up frequency.

Frameworks like this can offer structure to these conversations for managers who might not feel confident initiating them, says de Carteret.

“We need to give them tools to support them in the science of those conversations,” she says. “Because if we just leave it all up to art, some people do it well, and some people don’t – that’s just human nature.”

Medium-term strategy: Empower managers to address workplace stress

Given that managers have a disproportionate impact on employees’ experiences at work, medium-term strategies to address workplace stress should focus on supporting and empowering middle management.

Positive management practices are more than half the battle in mitigating workplace stress; according to Gallup’s findings, those who work in companies with bad management practices are nearly 60 per cent more likely to be stressed than people working in environments with good management practices. 

“We don’t want to villainise managers because they’ve got the toughest job at the moment. When they’re feeling overwhelmed and they’re not supported by their direct manager, then it’s hard for them to cascade [that support] down. They revert back into survival mode, which is the opposite of a growth mindset.

“So [HR should] focus on supporting that manager population first because when they’re engaged, connected and energised, then they will energise, connect and support their teams.”

Beyond providing managers with mental health support of their own, HR can also equip managers to address employees’ needs by providing training in areas like coaching, trauma-informed practice and mental health first aid.

Gain the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct workplace processes in a trauma-informed manner with AHRI’s Trauma Informed HR short course.

Given that managers tend to experience more stress than their direct reports, de Carteret stresses the importance of framing this training the right way so it doesn’t feel like an additional burden on their time or energy.

“They have to believe that it’s going to be an enabler for them,” she says. “They have to see the connection between [reducing stress] and delivering performance and profit. That way, it’s less about giving them more to do and more about giving them skills to be more effective.”

“[HR should] focus on supporting that manager population first because when they’re engaged, connected and energised, then they will energise, connect and support their teams.” – Claire de Carteret, Managing Director, APAC at Gallup.

Long-term strategy: Create a culture of recognition and development

Effectively mitigating stress in the long-term requires a sustainable approach that goes beyond immediate interventions and manager training. 

No matter how effectively managers can respond to stress in the moment, these measures are only a band-aid without long-term cultural change.

One of the most effective ways to mitigate stress in the long term is by creating a robust and meaningful reward and recognition program, says de Carteret.

“Everyone just wants to be acknowledged for their contribution. If you don’t feel like someone’s seeing what you’re doing or acknowledging and appreciating it, it can have such a big impact,” she says.

“[In our research], we see a big gap between how managers rate themselves in terms of recognising their teams and the way their direct reports rate them recognising the teams. It’s a bit of a blind spot for managers.”

It’s in employers’ interests to close this gap, she says, since a lack of reward and recognition is one of the 14 psychosocial hazards put forward by SafeWork Australia as part of the new code of practice. 

Another important long-term stress management strategy is ensuring employees feel challenged in a healthy way.

Read HRM’s article on how to push employees out of their comfort zone (without pushing them too far).

“Something else we’ve seen in our research is that when people can use their strengths, they are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life, and they’re six times more likely to be engaged,” says de Carteret. 

“So if people understand what their strengths are, and they can find a way to use them every day, then they’re energised through that.”

Leveraging recognition and opportunities for growth helps ensure that any pressure employees experience is temporary and productive rather than prolonged and draining. 

Driving these cultural shifts while ensuring that immediate support systems are in place is the key to alleviating workplace stress and, crucially, improving employees’ overall quality of life, says de Carteret.

“The workplace can be so fulfilling and developmental, and it should have a positive impact on people’s lives,” she says. “The only thing we do more than work is sleep, so we have to [make sure] it’s fulfilling.”

Improve your ability to recognise the signs and symptoms of mental health conditions and learn effective strategies to manage health and wellness in the workplace with AHRI’s Mental Health at Work short course.

The post A guide to responding to workplace stress in the short, medium and long term appeared first on HRM online.

Middle managers are working in increasingly hybrid workforces, often geographically dispersed and requiring more flexibility than ever before. Amid a cost-of-living crisis, social and political challenges, and the long-tail mental health impacts of the pandemic, employees are coming to work seeking support for personal issues from their managers.

Middle managers are also expected to do more with less, such as boosting productivity in organisations battling employee shortages and wellbeing issues. It’s a lot to contend with on top of making it through their own workloads.  

The unrelenting pressure of working in middle management led Paul Farina towards unhealthy over-working habits. He spent a decade in the cosmetics and retail sectors in Australia and the UK, managing teams and clients across various time zones. 

Working around the clock was common. 

He would barely get home from a long day in the office when his boss would call, asking for a debrief from the day. Rather than speak up and admit it was too much, Farina handled the pressure by working harder and longer, and turned to alcohol to cope with the stress.

“When you’re in middle management, you’ve always got a boss needing monthly and quarterly budgets to be hit, projects to be met by deadline and things to be completed within budget, and all that pressure gets funnelled down to you,” he says. 

“I needed to take those directives and deliver on them while simultaneously plugging gaps and vacancies, all the while toeing the company line even when things were less than perfect in the field.” 

This dynamic meant he was constantly looking for ways to appease others, often taking work off his team and doing it himself. 

“There’s an emotional side to working in middle management as well, which comes from this feeling of being emotionally isolated and not being able to share that with anyone. 

“You feel like you’re being held hostage by your staff as well because you don’t want to lose them, which leads to isolation. If I didn’t have a couple of buddies in the trenches with me that I could trust, I would have been in a lot of trouble. We’ve all got to pay the mortgage, and, at the time, I wasn’t in a situation to just up and quit.”  

Eventually, Farina did quit, navigating his way into a role where he now counsels others in middle management. Looking back, he admits he didn’t have the education or strategic thinking to deal with the pressure. 

“I had nothing in my toolkit at the time. I should have been more assertive, and I should have held senior staff coming at me with constant demands to account. I should have learned to say ‘no’.

“I don’t recall saying ‘no’ to anything or anyone, which means I was constantly appeasing staff and external stakeholders.”

He believes the pressure on middle managers was amplified during the pandemic years. 

“Budgets are down and organisational hierarchies have become even flatter. Middle managers are carrying a lot of that load. 

“When you get under the hood, most organisations have a lot fewer people in them than you might assume.”

Middle managers are feeling the strain on their mental health

The complex work of middle management is all taking a toll on this cohort’s mental health. Not surprisingly, more than half of middle managers (53 per cent) are feeling stressed or burned out and 46 per cent are experiencing anxiety, according to the Indeed 2023 Workplace Wellbeing Report. 

Middle managers also feel neglected and lack essential leadership, communication and people management skills, found research by the Australian Institute of Management and Monash University. 

It indicated that middle managers are therefore significantly underperforming despite their key role in corporate ranks. But this doesn’t necessarily reflect a lack of capability. 

Many haven’t been adequately trained to deal with these added pressures, or don’t have the bandwidth to respond appropriately to the competing pressures put upon them. 

“We need to acknowledge that individual contributors promoted to middle management don’t come automatically equipped with the management skills needed to thrive in their role.” – Kade Brown, Workforce Solutions Director, RMIT Online

Reducing friction points for managers

Bolstering middle managers’ capabilities needs to be a key priority for organisations. 

Effective middle managers are able to reduce friction points at work, accelerate action and help an organisation work towards its goals. 

The challenge of balancing the fiscal needs of a business, managing cost and maximising profits means there is a huge under-investment in leadership capabilities, says Lorraine Farah FCPHR, Director of Leaning Forward. 

She wants to see organisations drag middle managers out of the weeds of work where they are often overworked and under-resourced.  

“Senior leaders underestimate the impact their [managers] have throughout their organisation,” she says. “The shadow they cast by the behaviours they demonstrate impacts not only engagement, but, importantly, all aspects of delivery of the business outcomes.”

Coupled with this, managers and leaders often deprioritise development and training in their already over-committed roles and seem unwilling to find time to upskill, she says. 

As well as time constraints, she lists three main issues holding middle managers back from utilising their full potential:

• A lack of commitment from leaders to prioritise managers’ development as a core capability.
• Structurally, the span of control of middle managers often sees them stretched too thin. They have too many direct reports, combined with complex processes, leaving them burnt out just trying to get the job done. 
• Managers aren’t usually rewarded for being a good manager. It may be acknowledged, yet it’s not always encouraged nor rewarded in a way that delivering on business results is. Managers will focus on what is measured and rewarded, and make choices on which work to prioritise when pressed for time. 

Farah wants to see commitment at an executive level to consistent, non-negotiable leadership development for middle managers. 

For example, providing access to leadership development topics right in the moments they need it most – such as how to conduct performance reviews, manage conflict, create space for innovation, seek and provide feedback, etc., in addition to established leadership programs.

This just-in-time training approach helps keep learning highly relevant for middle managers, so they are able to bake it into their workflow rather than viewing their upskilling as separate to their work or as an addition to their to-do list.

Research from McKinsey & Company shows that companies that invest in their human capital yield more consistent earnings through times of crisis. In fact, organisations with effective middle managers in the top quartile produced up to 21 times greater total shareholder returns than others in lower quartiles, according to 11 measured management practices used to define an organisation’s health.  

“The correlation between trust and the relationship between employees and their direct manager is strong and leads to better outcomes,” says Farah. 

How technological development will impact middle managers

While the role of middle managers will continue to evolve with technological advances, it’s unlikely the layer will disappear entirely, says executive coach Smita Das Jain.  

However, the specific responsibilities of middle managers will evolve alongside the adoption of technology as routine tasks and administrative duties are automated.

“Organisations [should] stop and take stock, and adopt technology to automate many of the tasks middle managers perform, such as training, employee performance, generating reports and making decisions,” says Jain. 

This frees up time for middle managers to focus on higher-level strategic planning and decision-making, she says. 

Rethinking traditional managerial roles

As organisations shift and become more complex, middle managers may become more vital than ever, says Murat Tarakci, Professor of Innovation Strategy at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.

He cites findings that attribute 22 to 30 per cent gains in productivity and innovation to effective middle management. In a separate academic paper he recently published, he illustrates the challenges middle managers face by quoting one middle manager at phone company Nokia admitting: “We knew the iPhone was coming out about a year in advance. We had pretty good specifications for it. The CEO forwarded the email to his subordinates, writing ‘Please take action on this’. Yet, middle managers folded, and opted to sugar-coat the stalled process, causing Nokia to lose the competitive battle for smartphones.” 

“Middle managers are constantly coping with, adapting to, or even resisting contradictory demands and pressures,” says Tarakci in his paper.

“As new technologies emerge, rivals flood one’s turf and customer preferences reposition… these shifts require rapid and effective organisational responses to adapt to an ever-changing environment,” says Tarakci.  

While changes in the business landscape often necessitate extra support for middle managers, the simple elements of work can also create friction points. For example, an excessive number of direct reports can overwhelm managers, hindering their ability to provide adequate coaching and guidance, says Kade Brown, Workforce Solutions Director at RMIT Online.      

“Conversely, too few direct reports may indicate inefficiencies or questionable promotions, leading to underutilisation of managerial talent,” he says. 

Empowering managers to focus on the right tasks is critical, he says. This involves identifying and streamlining low-value bureaucratic activities, leveraging automation and outsourcing where applicable. 

“By reducing administrative burdens, middle managers can allocate more time and energy towards fostering a supportive environment, nurturing talent and addressing the needs of their teams,” says Brown. 

“We need to acknowledge that individual contributors promoted to middle management don’t come automatically equipped with the management skills needed to thrive in their role. They require intentional and targeted upskilling in three key areas: business acumen, structured problem-solving and people leadership.”     

As such, middle manager upskilling initiatives shouldn’t focus just on theory, but on embedded practice and behaviour change. 

“It’s imperative to design or procure upskilling solutions that enable managers to integrate new skills seamlessly into their current world of work,” says Brown. 

This strategic realignment enables managers to focus on driving impact and promoting a culture of engagement and growth within the organisation. 

“The pace of change, disruption and transformation in the world of work isn’t going to decelerate any time soon,” says Brown.

To alleviate the cognitive load on middle managers, the best thing we can do is to equip them with the tools and skills they need to cope with this new reality. 

This article was first published in the April/May 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

Want to learn more about effective leadership and management? Sign up for AHRI’s short course to understand your leadership style and learn how to create key performance indicators.

The post How can organisations better support middle managers? appeared first on HRM online.

When a business faces tough times, executive-level conversation inevitably turns to reinventing the organisational chart. Those at the top of the hierarchy are, by and large, considered indispensable; and there’s rarely much fat to trim at the bottom, where products are manufactured and services are delivered.

So that leaves middle managers. Are they really necessary?

Many consultants argue that middle management’s supervisory responsibilities would be better handled by veteran staff ‘on the ground floor’, while their other duties – such as analysing team performance – could be outsourced.

“When consultants come in to lower costs, inevitably the first thing they try is to ‘de-layer’ the organisation,” says Pitosh Heyden, Associate Professor at Monash Business School.

“That means removing the middle layers.”

MBA and executive development programs often espouse this approach, says Zahira Jaser, an Assistant Professor at the University of Sussex Business School in the UK.

“The idea that middle managers are inefficient – that middle management causes bottlenecks – is widespread,” she says.

What’s more, many of these programs teach old models of leadership in which influence flows only from the top down, framing middle managers as mere administrators.

Jaser believes this view is misguided, particularly as we move towards a post-COVID work environment.

“Middle managers are indispensable,” she says. “Today, they are often the part of the organisation that is under the greatest stress, and they are the people who engage in some of the most important critical thinking.”

In a fast-changing world, where organisations must adapt quickly, middle managers have a key role to play, says Jaser.

“I don’t see middle managers just as administrators, or even just as leaders. I see them as connectors, which is an entirely different way of looking at them.” – Zahira Jaser, Assistant Professor, University of Sussex Business School

“They need to create pictures of possible futures, which is a skill we would typically attribute to leaders at the very top.”

Heyden agrees, saying, “We know now that de-layering doesn’t work, because you lose so much tacit knowledge about the organisation.”

Middle managers, they say, can be an organisation’s most effective communicators and change-makers if they are well-resourced – and, crucially, respected.

“They need to be empowered,” says Jaser. “Their job needs to be facilitated. Their stress needs to be recognised. Their critical-thinking abilities need to be praised. And I don’t think we are doing any of this enough right now.”

Creating a new paradigm

In order to appreciate the middle managers’ role in an organisation, we need to depart from old ways of thinking, says Jaser.

In the 1970s, Abraham Zaleznik, from Harvard Business School, wrote an influential article that defined leaders as ‘visionaries’ and managers as ‘strategic administrators’. The value judgment he was making was clear.

At the time, his thinking aligned with reality. “We had very large organisations with very strong hierarchies where the decisions were taken at the top,” says Jaser.

“Middle managers, therefore, were only there to facilitate the implementation of strategy that was decided at the executive level.”

But the world has moved on since the 1970s. Contemporary life is less certain, and organisations must regularly contend with paradigm-shifting change, from the internet revolution to the Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19.

“Organisations need to continuously problem-solve to come up with creative solutions to challenges that simply didn’t exist before,” says Jaser. It’s in this context that the role of middle management comes to the fore.

“The speed of change and the need for organisations to adapt at short notice is such that middle managers need to be empowered to think independently,” says Jaser.

She proposes a new way of viewing middle management that takes into account both its traditional function and the realities of the present day.

“I don’t see middle managers just as administrators, or even just as leaders. I see them as connectors, which is an entirely different way of looking at them.”

Middle managers can have unique functions as translators and facilitators, she believes.     

“A lot of change now needs to happen from the bottom up. People on the ground are often in touch with the real problems, and therefore they can provide the real solutions.”

These solutions need to be analysed, synthesised and succinctly communicated up to the organisation’s top tier.

“The way this can happen most efficiently and effectively is through middle managers.”

“We know now that the companies that successfully pivot during crises are the ones that give middle managers the time to come up with ideas for change, and the leeway to implement those ideas.” – Pitosh Heyden, Associate Professor, Monash Business School

It’s an approach that Katie Ashton-Taylor, Head of People at Bupa Health Services, says has served her organisation well.

“Our middle managers really help to inform and influence the strategic priorities we focus on and the operational changes we make,” says Ashton-Taylor.

When Bupa’s executive team has decided how to proceed on a specific initiative, it is middle management’s job to convey that information back to teams on the ground.

But the company doesn’t view them simply as messengers, says Ashton-Taylor. “Their critical role is to take that information and translate it so it’s relevant for, and makes sense to, the teams they support.”

The efficiency myth

Rather than functioning as bottlenecks, Bupa’s middle managers speed up the vertical flow of information in both directions, making the business more efficient, says Ashton-Taylor.

Researchers argue that middle managers can improve efficiency in other ways, too.

In 2017, academics reviewed a range of research into the structure of healthcare organisations and concluded that middle management was best placed to incite radical change in healthcare settings.

The authors said organisations must encourage their middle managers to engage in “ambidextrous learning” – that is, learning about what is happening both above and below them – and then allow them to spearhead the change initiatives.

Heyden says there’s other research which supports this recommendation.

“We know now that the companies that successfully pivot during crises are the ones that give middle managers the time to come up with ideas for change, and the leeway to implement those ideas,” he says.

Ralf Wilden, Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Macquarie University, points out that organisational change often takes place in collaboration with outside partners.

He believes middle managers should be in charge of this process.

“We know that modern organisations have to increase their focus on outside stakeholders,” he says. “And we know that you need to have a coordinated approach when dealing with multiple external partners. Why would you not give middle managers the power to lead that?     

“It’s difficult to give that power to every single marketing manager in your organisation, but you still need someone who takes charge and coordinates those activities.

“It’s not going to be the COO. It needs to be someone in the middle.”

Jaser agrees. Giving middle managers more autonomy and responsibility improves efficiency at the executive level, she says.

“By taking on some organisational responsibilities, middle managers give the people above them the breathing room to do strategic and creative thinking, because they know the middle managers are taking care of business.”

Designing a middle manager superhero

Many middle managers already bear many of these responsibilities, says Heyden, even if they’re not recognised for doing so.

“We know from studies that middle managers have the highest stress levels in organisations, and that’s because they have to cope with executive thinking, operational thinking and cross-functional thinking,” he says.

The pandemic has made this clear. Heyden points to a recent study of 9000 knowledge workers that found middle managers were 9 per cent more likely to say they had trouble working remotely during the pandemic than those above and below them in the hierarchy.

“And so you have to equip them not only with cognitive skills, but also with emotional and social skills so they can cope with the demands.”

Heyden outlines five high-level skills that today’s middle managers should possess:

1. Emotional balancing: “Regulating enthusiasm and caution in radical change.”
2. Empathetic concern: “Caring for others.”
3. Psychological safety: “Creating a trusting environment to facilitate the ‘failure-based learning’ that’s crucial for change.”
4. Role switching: “Wearing different hats.”
5. Perspective taking: “Particularly useful for negotiations with multiple stakeholders. Where role switching is more about managing ongoing processes, perspective taking is useful for navigating bottlenecks and reaching resolutions that may impede continuation.”

We also need to collectively review how we train and recruit middle managers, says Jaser.

“What we usually do is teach middle managers about leadership. We have a very big toolkit for teaching them about the types of leadership. But leadership is not enough.”

Today’s middle managers must also be trained to influence upwards, she says, which is a concept known as followership.

“Influencing from a lower-power position is much more difficult than influencing from the top down, yet we don’t teach this. They also need to be able to mediate, think critically, negotiate and nurture relationships at the top and the bottom,” says Jaser.

Many middle managers haven’t been trained in these areas. “They’re promoted because they’re good at their jobs. In a bank, it’s the person who makes the most money. In a startup, it’s the person who creates the best software, and so forth.”

But the ideal middle manager is one who understands both what happens below and what happens above.

Heyden believes it’s in our best interest to reframe the role of the middle manager.

“We need to make the middle management role one that’s attractive to our most talented people,” he says. “Because we know that when middle managers thrive, companies thrive.”

Give your middle managers the tools needed for emotional balancing, empathy and more with AHRI’s short course.
Book in for the next course on 8 November.

The post In praise of middle managers: your critical connectors appeared first on HRM online.