INTHEBLACK June 2022 - Magazine - Page 58
F E AT U R E
// M I D D L E M A N A G E M E N T
“It’s totally a buyer’s market, and employees can shop around.
A strong and functioning middle management team should be part
of your attraction and retention strategies in what is now going to
be a very complex market.”
ANNA MARSHALL, PEOPLE MASTERY
Unfortunately, many organisations make the
mistake of only offering promotion through a
business in the form of leadership, which means
career progression is often dependent on being able
to manage other people.
“That creates the risk that you’ve got people
who do not want to be people leaders in middle
management positions because they see that as
the only way of progressing in their career,” says
Marshall.
It should be a give-give arrangement also. Asking
managers to take on more responsibilities, and with it
quite likely more work, can face some opposition unless
there is a clear outline of what is expected of them.
“You’ve got to give them a little bit of room to do
that work.
“If they’re on billable hours then you need to make
sure that you’re just cutting a little bit of their targets
off so that they can invest that time into the broader
workforce, which of course will increase the billable
hours of the broader workforce,” says Houghton.
The role of the middle manager has also
been brought into sharp focus as a result of the
58 ITB June 2022
pandemic, says Marshall. “It has created the
opportunity for anyone in a leadership position to
pay more attention to their people and not just in
a, ‘are you doing your job kind of way,’ but ‘are you
actually OK as a whole person?’,” she says.
Keeping that attitude as people transition back
to offices will be the difference between whether
people stay with an organisation or move on.
“It’s totally a buyer’s market, and employees
can shop around,” says Marshall.
“A strong and functioning middle management
team should be part of your attraction and
retention strategies in what is now going to be
a very complex market.”
Houghton also points to the way the pandemic
has heightened levels of anxiety and burnout,
noting that intolerance for bad behaviour has
increased and people aren’t so frightened to talk
to their employers about what they want.
“For the first time in any research I’ve ever seen
in 20 odd years is people saying that the number
one thing people want is decent people to work
with, and that often starts with their leader.”