"Harder During the Pandemic" A Plea for 'Middle Managers' Like Team and Deputy Managers [Jjinbit]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] "The Middle Managers Are Not Alright."

Bloomberg recently reported, citing a survey, that middle managers have been placed in difficult situations due to COVID-19. In Korea, middle managers typically refer to deputy general managers or general managers. They are responsible for managing a certain number of employees within a company. At the same time, they mainly serve as coordinators between the top executives of a company, including the CEO, and the employees. What has happened to them?

◆ When Executives Experience Less Stress... Middle Managers Complain of Burnout

The Future Forum consortium, created by the enterprise messenger platform Slack, announced on the 21st (local time) that a survey conducted among more than 10,000 office workers in six countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan found that middle managers are experiencing the most severe burnout. According to the survey results, 43% of middle managers answered "yes" to the question, "Are you suffering from burnout at work?" Regular employees answered 40%, senior executives higher than middle managers answered 37%, and executives answered 32%, showing a gradually decreasing response rate.

In fact, coordination seems to be the most difficult task in working life. Because of this, middle managers who take on the role of coordination have been evaluated as having a difficult role even before the pandemic. According to the American current affairs weekly The Atlantic, a 2015 study conducted at Columbia University on 22,000 full-time workers before COVID-19 found that supervisors or managers reported depression at a higher rate than regular employees or company heads.

The researchers at the time described middle managers as being in a "contradictory-class location." Middle managers receive higher wages and more autonomy than regular employees but less than executives, and they have relatively less authority to make major decisions. In particular, they sometimes have to implement policies made by upper management directly to employees without being involved in the decision-making process. This creates pressure from both sides, resulting in double pressure.

The problem is that this situation worsened due to COVID-19. According to a survey released by global public opinion research firm Gallup in November last year, the proportion of full-time managerial workers who reported feeling burnout increased significantly from 28% in 2020 to 35% in 2021. During the same period, executives decreased from 25% to 22%, and regular employees remained at 27%. Gallup analyzed that during this period, the rate of depression diagnoses among managers increased compared to other ranks, and only one in four managers said they could maintain a healthy work-life balance.

◆ Why Did COVID-19 Make Middle Managers Suffer?

One sudden change during COVID-19 was the rapid spread of remote work. Nearly three years later, in countries like the United States, more executives are demanding a return to the office. However, employees are refusing to return to the office. The large gap and conflicts between the two sides have created a difficult situation for middle managers who have to coordinate. They are caught between pressure from executives to persuade employees and employees refusing to come to the office while demanding wage increases to cope with rising living costs, leading to exhaustion and an increase in middle managers complaining of burnout.

Sila Subramanian, co-founder of Future Forum, told Bloomberg, "What we have confirmed over time is that middle managers are struggling." Regarding the recent issue of middle managers trying to bring remote workers back to the office, he explained, "They hear questions from team members like 'Why do we have to do this? Why do we have to communicate all day on Zoom?'" and "Middle managers are having difficulty explaining this."

Besides the office return issue, middle managers also face difficulties in boosting employee morale, maintaining corporate culture, and managing team tasks without being able to meet employees face-to-face. With the work environment drastically changed, middle managers must find new ways to deliver results in all matters such as work, meetings, and performance evaluations. Foreign media also report that it becomes mentally harder because they do not share these problems with competing fellow managers.

Some argue that with technological advancements, rapidly changing trends, and the spread of remote work, the role of middle managers in traditional organizations may weaken to create more distributed and agile organizations.

However, recent situations suggest that the coordination role of middle managers who look after and manage individual employees is becoming increasingly necessary. Zahira Yaser, a professor at the University of Sussex in the UK, wrote in June last year in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled "The Real Value of Middle Managers," that "In a situation where companies increasingly rely on virtual worlds for management and communication (due to technological advances), investing in making middle managers 'connecting leaders' is essential." In such turbulent times, finding ways to ease middle managers' concerns through education and investment rather than pressure is expected to have a positive impact on companies and organizations.

Editor's Note[Jjinbit] is short for 'Jeong Hyunjin's Business Trend' and 'Real Business Trend.' It is a corner that shows trends in 'work' changes such as organizational culture and personnel systems after the pandemic. Based on analyses from foreign media and major overseas institutions that have not received much attention so far, we will deliver fresh and differentiated information and perspectives.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.