Managers are the backbone of any organization. They are the critical link between employees and an organization’s culture and they’re a dominant factor in the employee experience, accounting for 70% of the variance in team engagement. Employees depend on managers to set clear objectives, clarify roles and expectations, provide feedback on performance, and coach and guide them to do their best work.

Managers can make or break any learning initiative. They must approve time to learn, reinforce application of learned skills on the job and help track performance improvement. Managers are the lynchpins and key to the quality of everything from onboarding and performance to development and retention. After all, it’s said that employees leave managers, not the organization.

Yet managers are under intense pressure and evidence suggests that it’s only getting worse. According to a report from Top Workplaces, 67% say they struggle with heavy workloads, the demands of managing larger teams, lack of role clarity and the sense of feeling “squeezed” between satisfying senior leaders and taking on the stress of their direct reports. Meetings also create a burden because of the stress of scheduling one-to-one meetings with a higher volume of direct reports.

It’s not surprising, then, that over 50% of managers say they are overwhelmed at work, and 40% of new managers with less than two years of managerial experience are currently looking for new jobs. Managers report the highest rates of burnout across all job grades, with more stress and worse physical well-being and work-life balance than the people they manage. Having stressed and burned-out managers highlights organizational risks not only to talent pipelines but also to overall productivity, employee satisfaction and business success.

So, how can L&D professionals help organizations buffer the damaging impact of workplace stress and burnout upon managers? Here are key areas to focus upon.

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Remove Workload Barriers

Managers have it tough. According to Gartner, the average manager has 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage with managerial responsibilities having doubled, post-pandemic, compared to individual contributors.

L&D professionals must help sensitize leaders to the negative impact of heavy workloads upon middle and frontline managers and help ensure that managers are given the tools they need to succeed without burning out. Organizations like BuzzFeed, Atlassian, Show + Tell and Deloitte use project management tools like Trello, Asana and Teamwork for helping managers track individual tasks and resource management software (like Float) to give an overview of where team members’ attention will be focused for coming weeks, months or quarters. A clear picture of a team’s capacity helps managers distribute and delegate tasks and manage project deliverables more efficiently.

L&D professionals can also help senior leaders address the impact of their behavior upon managers’ workload stress. For instance, “always-on” leadership practices include sending emails after hours, discouraging personal and vacation time off, scheduling back-to-back meetings with little to no “white space” in between, and increasing demands for higher output while decreasing resource support for completing work.

To reduce burnout, managers must be empowered to set a good example of workload management with their teams. Peter Sena, the CEO and chief creative officer of Digital Surgeons, ensures his team doesn’t feel constant pressure to be online during late evenings or weekends. “We use Slack, and I encourage people to use the ‘do not disturb’ function in the evening,” he says. “It’s helped us become more efficient in how we use email.” He also provides his team with the “freedom and flexibility” to accomplish job tasks and to take regular breaks to manage stress or burnout. “In this industry, it is not uncommon to work well past 8 p.m. and to work every weekend,” he says. “But I wanted to create a more relaxed company culture.”

Reset Role Expectations

Managing isn’t what it used to be. Not only are managers grappling with rapid technological change, flattening hierarchies, agile work and new attitudes about talent, they’re doing it in environments where organizational expectations have not changed with the times. For example, in a Predictive Index and HR Dive survey of 220+ management-level leaders, 86% of respondents said that their views of what makes a successful people leader have changed in the last five years while their organization’s views have not.

L&D professionals can help organizations uncover and address significant areas that thwart managers’ success:

• Ill-defined responsibilities. More than one-quarter of organizations (26%) surveyed said they do not clearly define roles and responsibilities for people leaders.
• Insufficient training opportunities. Middle managers spend 35% or more of their time in meetings, spend more time managing projects than people, and say they do not get adequate time or support to develop themselves or their people.
• Unclear success metrics. Up to one-third of organizations surveyed do not have a formal method for measuring the success of people leaders.
• Overlooked well-being. Only 10% of organizations surveyed prioritized well-being as a key criterion for successful people leadership.

Relying on the same old “command and control” expectations will not equip managers with the skills and resources needed to thrive in today’s more demanding world of work. Not convinced? Consider this. When organizations focus on resetting role expectations, managers are 1.4x more likely to find their job manageable.

Retool Leadership Development

Managers need help. Amid the push for becoming a skills-first organization, manager effectiveness has rapidly evolved as a strategic priority. Employees who report to effective managers are higher performing, more engaged and less likely to leave. Coaching is a key driver to improving effectiveness and helping managers adjust to new roles and increased demands for modern, more human-centric leadership skills.

Modern leadership focuses on building connections with employees through mentoring, coaching and advocating for career development and growth as opposed to gatekeeping and micromanaging. It includes building inclusive teams, practicing empathy, listening and patience, and proactively recognizing employees’ accomplishments.

At Biogen, senior leaders act as a support network for smaller cohorts of managers in order to model and coach “human-centered” leadership behaviors that inspire trust and psychological safety. Coaching has been shown to have cascading benefits because it not only increases the performance of an individual manager, but it also increases a manager’s ability to impact team performance.

For example, managers who receive coaching are 1.3 times more likely to be engaged and say their stress levels are manageable compared to those who don’t. In addition, Gartner research shows that employees who report to effective manager coaches are 40% more engaged and are 20% more likely to stay at their organizations than those who report to ineffective coaches. To that end, L&D should prioritize coaching and networking when retooling leadership development.

L&D should also teach managers to care for themselves. Companies like Microsoft and Salesforce prioritize leaders’ and employees’ well-being by helping them set boundaries, have difficult discussions, develop “power hours” and “deep thinking” rituals, and leverage wellness resources to effectively rest and recharge.

Ramp Up Recognition

Managers get no respect. They carry the load of supporting increased demands to lead with empathy from a new generation of workers, while receiving little recognition, resource support or empathy for their own well-being.

Managers are often seen as expendable and are frequently treated with disrespect by their own managers. When managers are treated poorly, the dysfunction trickles down through the ranks and overall performance suffers. Managers have the most substantial influence on an employee’s experience — so a little management recognition goes a long way and has a ripple effect towards boosting morale and increasing job satisfaction throughout all organizational levels. For example, BetterUp research shows that highly resilient managers have more resilient, innovative teams. These teams also function with lower burnout and greater agility.

Strategic recognition practices can also decrease burnout by up to 80% according to OC Tanner. L&D professionals can help organizational leaders do a better job of recognizing managers, seeking their input and letting them know that their voice matters.

It Takes a Village

Middle managers are the bridge from strategic vision to operational detail. They are one of your most valuable assets for developing a skills-first, future-proofed talent pipeline. Yet most managers today are stretched thin and facing challenges that go well beyond their comfort, confidence or training. Investing in managers’ development, addressing their unique stressors, and creating a supportive environment for their success is vital to organizational growth and has a bottom-line impact on overall productivity, performance, engagement and retention.

However, as pivotal as management development may be, skills alone are not enough. Skills can build expertise, but they can’t fix workloads. L&D professionals must remember that, in many cases, training requests are often seen as one more demand amid an unmanageable workload. Studies show that job manageability is actually more effective than skill proficiency in improving manager effectiveness.

In short, it takes a wide range of cultural levers, with dedicated resources and focused intent from leaders, to combat the negative impacts of work-related burnout and stress upon both managers and employees. The organizations that most effectively tip the scale are those with integrated strategies that create accountability for work-life balance and well-being across all roles and levels. After all, practices promoting a healthy, engaged and thriving workforce aren’t just good for your people, they’re good for business. How are you and your leaders tipping the scale for a more future-proofed, upskilled and thriving pipeline of managers?