Throughout the pandemic, managers have been relied upon by the C-suite to drive change and looked to by employees for guidance and support. The pressure from both sides is catching up to them, Fortune reported Jan. 28.
"The rate of managers leaving is doubling. Suddenly you have an entire generation of leadership that’s just gone away; that’s potentially devastating," Laszlo Bock, CEO of software platform Humu, told Fortune.
"People don’t want to be managers anymore," Mr. Bock told Fortune. "You see this in engineering; the best engineers don’t want to be managers. The best salespeople don’t want to be sales managers. We’ll see that more across different functions: People saying it’s not worth a 20% pay raise to deal with that headache and having more layers of management on top of me telling me what to do."
Employee retention, hiring and team performance were cited as the top challenges by managers dealing with "Great Resignation" fallout.
What's more is a growing disconnect between the management and leadership levels. Leaders surveyed cited team performance, teamwork and transformation as the top responsibilities for managers, yet managers cited dealing with employee burnout and retention as most important.
The report suggests that change should come from the top, with leaders ensuring that managers feel supported and rewarded in their roles.