How to relieve the strain on line managers

The wide­spread adop­tion of flex­i­ble and hybrid work­ing in many indus­tries is pre­sent­ing nov­el chal­lenges to line man­agers, who need more sup­port from the HR func­tion in han­dling these and their ever-expand­ing remits. Effec­tive back­ing will prove vital, because line man­agers are the “stew­ards of sus­tain­able per­for­mance and employ­ee expe­ri­ence”. 

So says Dr Caitlin Duffy, research direc­tor at Gart­ner, who notes that their peo­ple man­age­ment skills – or, rather, their defi­cien­cies in this area – have become “the num­ber-two dri­ver of attri­tion behind com­pen­sa­tion. When there are so many options in today’s tal­ent mar­ket, man­agers are more crit­i­cal than ever in get­ting the best per­for­mance out of their staff and retain­ing top tal­ent.”

Line man­agers are often under immense pres­sure. Even before the pan­dem­ic, a research report by the Insti­tute for Employ­ment Stud­ies, The Squeezed Mid­dle: why HR should be hug­ging and not squeez­ing line man­agers, revealed that they were tak­ing on tasks that were tra­di­tion­al­ly in HR’s domain, such as per­for­mance man­age­ment and the career devel­op­ment of their team mem­bers. Senior exec­u­tives were also count­ing on them to set tar­gets and main­tain organ­i­sa­tion­al stan­dards, while also ensur­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, rep­re­sent­ing brand val­ues and keep­ing abreast of indus­try devel­op­ments, among oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties.

As the uptake of hybrid work­ing increas­es, the peo­ple man­age­ment ele­ments of line man­agers’ roles, which have been ren­dered more oner­ous by the Covid cri­sis, are expect­ed to become trick­i­er still. This sit­u­a­tion, which is already reach­ing “tip­ping point”, accord­ing to Duffy, is lead­ing many of them to feel over­loaded.

“Line man­agers have been ris­ing to the occa­sion, but at what cost? They are start­ing to burn out,” she says. “Their expe­ri­ence is in dan­ger of caus­ing attri­tion.” 

One of the biggest new chal­lenges fac­ing them is how to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with team mem­bers who may not be in the same place at the same time. Julie Bro­phy, prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant for organ­i­sa­tion­al devel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy OE Cam, points out that doing so “requires more inten­tion­al focus and per­spec­tive, which takes more effort” than it does in the case of cen­tral­ly based teams.

Impor­tant issues in this con­text include guard­ing against dis­tance bias, she says. Fail­ing to do so can not only lead to uncon­scious dis­crim­i­na­tion; it can also dam­age the sense of belong­ing and engage­ment of remote work­ers who feel left out of the loop.

Line man­agers also need to find ways to empow­er their team mem­bers so that they can work out for them­selves the most effec­tive ways of achiev­ing the results expect­ed of them.

“It’s an approach based not on how you deliv­er but on what you deliv­er, which means that how and when some­thing is done is more under the con­trol of the indi­vid­ual doing it,” Bro­phy explains. “Enabling this kind of auton­o­my requires more of a coach­ing approach to man­age­ment – which is more demand­ing for the man­ag­er.”

Anoth­er chal­lenge for line man­agers is sup­port­ing the health and well­be­ing of an increas­ing­ly dis­persed team and cre­at­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly safe envi­ron­ment that enables peo­ple to be them­selves and speak out if nec­es­sary. The new world of work is ren­der­ing the stan­dard­ised, one-size-fits-all approach to team man­age­ment obso­lete. Man­agers must increas­ing­ly pro­vide indi­vid­u­alised sup­port and offer flex­i­bil­i­ty for each mem­ber. Duffy notes that this imper­a­tive can cause prob­lems for them from a capac­i­ty stand­point.

What can HR do to light­en the load? Bro­phy sug­gests remov­ing “organ­i­sa­tion­al block­ers” that make it hard­er for line man­agers to do their jobs. Such fac­tors will vary from employ­er to employ­er, of course, but an exam­ple would be a reward struc­ture that’s unin­ten­tion­al­ly incen­tivis­ing unde­sir­able behav­iour. 

It may also be nec­es­sary to redesign line man­agers’ roles. For employ­ers that oper­ate a project-based organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture, it could be valu­able to split man­age­r­i­al roles into ‘lead­ers of work’ and ‘lead­ers of peo­ple’, for instance. Assign­ing employ­ees a per­ma­nent peo­ple man­ag­er will pro­vide con­sis­ten­cy, even when the project teams they work in, and the project man­agers they work under, change reg­u­lar­ly.

Anoth­er way HR can help is by sup­port­ing soft skills devel­op­ment. This could come in the shape of pro­vid­ing for­mal man­age­ment train­ing, but oth­er inter­ven­tions include cre­at­ing net­work­ing groups that enable line man­agers to share their insights and pro­vid­ing access to coach­es and men­tors.

One employ­er that has tak­en such an approach is sus­tain­able food pro­duc­er Eco­tone UK. The com­pa­ny has intro­duced a for­mal coach­ing scheme for all mid­dle man­agers. Some of its man­agers have trained to be coach­es so that they can sup­port their peers, but exter­nal help is also pro­vid­ed.

But this isn’t sim­ply about skills devel­op­ment, notes Ecotone’s HR direc­tor, Ann Cham­bers. It’s also about ensur­ing that line man­agers feel prop­er­ly sup­port­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly when oper­at­ing in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. Just as impor­tant is giv­ing them explic­it per­mis­sion to make space and time for their own well­be­ing. 

Cham­bers adds that HR pro­fes­sion­als should also aim to serve as role mod­els for line man­agers, always exhibit­ing the appro­pri­ate behav­iour, what­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion. Most of all, HR should be there for line man­agers in much the same sense that line man­agers should be there for their staff. 

“Our job as HR pro­fes­sion­als is to act as mir­rors,” she says. “If we sup­port line man­agers in the right way, they’ll have the con­fi­dence and expe­ri­ence to sup­port their teams in the right way too, which means that every­one ben­e­fits.”