This article originally appeared on Business expert.
Companies are increasingly cutting out middle management positions, and it’s millennials who may feel their jobs are most at risk.
Several aspects contributed to the great “unbossing”, including cost cutting, Generation Z’s reluctance to administerdistant work and increased pressure on performance.
The consequences may very well be that as future generations enter the workforce, they’ll receive less mentoring and experience more stress from above.
But it is not just younger staff who could also be at a drawback.
Lara Milward, a neuroleadership trainer who uses neuroscientific discoveries to enhance the way managers operate, with expertise in workplace culture change, told Business Insider that it’s people in their 30s who are buying homes, beginning to have children and juggling “career development” and family life”, which can result in him suddenly losing his job.
“It is possible that this generation will take this blow,” she said.
Millennial middle managers are at risk
Joe Galvin, director of research at executive coaching organization Vistage, told BI that the trend of quitting the boss has emerged as a results of the normalization of working from home, advances in technology and artificial intelligence, and generational change.
“In the analog era, going back to, say, the 1980s, you had to communicate manually to be able to adjust staffing,” he said. “Today, technology has made all this possible. And the behavioral change we have seen during the pandemic has accelerated this process.”
In 2021, Steven Baert, then Novartis’s chief human resources and organization officer, he told Gallup that traditional leadership has “become redundant.” He said the company’s goal is to have employees motivated and encouraged to be efficient, not told what to do.
Nowadays, it is increasingly rare to satisfy the traditional version of a boss who walks around the office and checks what all his employees are doing.
“This chief’s job has changed tremendously,” Galvin said. “How to manage relationships in a more digital environment is much more difficult.”
While Galvin said the goal of cutting middle management was to enhance communication between employees and senior management, the effects could also be unfairly balanced.
Middle management positions was the reason for almost one third of the dismissals in 2023, evaluation for Bloomberg found – an increase from 20% in 2018
Analysis by Live Data Technologiesalso found that just about 50% of all layoffs in 2023 were managerial or senior positions, an increase of 57.6% from five years ago.
Facing cost cuts, layoffs and more demanding performance reviews, the level of trust among middle managers has declined significantly – research conducted by Glassdoor showed.
Many middle managers occur to be millennials.
Between the ages of 28 and 43, millennials are often in their first management positions or on their approach to higher positions.
They were also the hardest hit during the match “big burnout” in 2022representing 94% of laid-off staff, in line with data from Revelio Labs and Layoffs.fyi.
“Since millennials make up a large portion of middle management, this trend will most likely affect them, as well as some Gen Xers,” Chris Lovell, a profession expert at SoFi Technologies and founding father of Careers by Chris, told BI. .
“These are also the generations that were most likely taught to follow a traditional career path: go to school, get a degree and climb the corporate ladder,” Lovell said.
Work-life balance has modified
Ironically, millennials “are less interested in the bureaucracy and hierarchies in corporations,” Lovell said, which could also be one reason for the downsizing in middle management positions.
Data suggests this is applicable to each Millennials and Generation Z leaving management positionswith a lack of trust in senior management, perceived limited financial reward and an increased focus on work-life balance and leisure.
Many middle managers are also burnt outresulting from the reduction in the size of their teams and increased workload.
Gen Zers can also be changing the culture of the workforce, placing greater emphasis on their boundaries, mental health, and desire for greater autonomy.
“I think it clashes with the economy and where the world is going and companies cutting costs,” Milward said.
“When we think about a world of diversity, inclusion and inclusion of new generations, we are trying to move towards a flatter structure rather than the old-style parent-child relationship,” Milward added.
However, Joel Wolfe, founder and president of customer support agency HiredSupport, told BI that he believes this approach from younger generations could backfire.
There’s pressure on managers to consistently outperform the previous quarter, but millennials aren’t necessarily performing as well. Wolfe said that working with Millennial managers could be “difficult.”
“They have fixed schedules and are not flexible, which is difficult to adjust, especially when you work in different time zones,” he said.
Millennials and Gen Zers are increasingly forgoing additional time and pursuing promotions, as a substitute opting for more free time and leaving work at the door when they get home.
Wolfe said this may make people appear inflexible and due to this fact vulnerable in the event of layoffs.
“I prefer employees to work when they have tasks to do,” he said. “I don’t want them to be sitting in front of a screen waiting for the clock to strike 5 p.m.”
Impact on zoomers
Shoshanna Davis, founding father of Fairy Job Mother and a consultant who helps young people with their careers, told BI she wasn’t convinced that unbossing was a direct response to how younger generations view the world of labor.
However, this may likely disproportionately affect Gen Z in their first or second job.
“They are new to the world of work and they really need managers to help them find some footing,” Davis said. “Ultimately, eliminating these types of middle management positions means less guidance, less coaching and less mentoring, which I believe is still desperately needed in a post-Covid-19 world.”
Zoomers are not enamored by management. This is the generation that coined the term “work for lazy girls” and appear to imagine strongly in the advantages of “silent departure“
Will fewer management positions get replaced by higher salaries? Will Gen Zers’ profession progression stagnate if they do not have Millennial managers to look as much as? What does this mean for the next generations? Davis is not sure.
“If this is really a way to cut costs and there are no substitutes, what incentive will there be for people to work efficiently?” Davis said.
She added: “I really don’t see how this is going to play out.”