Under-the-radar burnout is crushing America's managers

• A higher share of managers are looking for new roles than non-managers, Gallup found.
• Gallup's Heather Barrett said many managers are "in survival mode" with more responsibilities.

Your boss might be more burned out than you are.

A Gallup survey of Fortune 500 chief human resources officers found "middle managers" are at the greatest risk of getting laid off in 2023, among companies performing layoffs this year. Companies that do layoff a disproportionate number of middle managers will leave remaining bosses with larger teams, said a Gallup post published this week referencing this finding.

This comes at a time when, overall, managers are experiencing higher levels of burnout and disengagement than their staff, the Gallup post said. These factors could be pushing a majority to seek work at different companies.

Around half of managers said their teams went through restructuring in 2023, and around 42% noted budget cuts as a change at their organization this year, suggesting managers have more work to do with new workflows, team structures, and tighter budgets.

Managers have also had to figure out remote work, including how to oversee a virtual team, and other duties they may not have had pre-pandemic, Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, told Insider.

"When do you set the team meeting? If you have workers that are six hours apart in terms of time zone, you have morning meetings, you have evening meetings," Richardson said. "Simple acts like that have made managing teams a little more difficult."

Being a manager has gotten much harder

Managers in the hybrid-work era are often faced with a dilemma: enforce company return-to-office policies that best set teams up for success but annoy some employees, or tailor remote work policies to each employee and potentially risk team cohesion.

"Managers are needing to flex new muscles to lead differently in hybrid environments and are also in the emotionally burdensome and exhausting position of being caught between leaders and employees on the topic of return to office," Heather Barrett, a director at Gallup and co-author of the article, told Insider. "For many managers, they are being asked to communicate and enforce requirements that they personally may not prefer."

Additionally, compared to their staff, managers are more likely to be looking for a job, Gallup found. Fifty-five percent are watching for or actively seeking new roles compared to 49% of individual contributors.

Managers are also more likely to feel like their organization cares little about their wellbeing, Gallup found.

Many managers are "in survival mode," Barrett said, meaning that they often cannot provide regular feedback or open doors for their staff — leading to them indirectly "quiet firing" some of their staff.

"I agree that manager burnout is a big contributor to quiet firing — managers neither feel they have the time to spend with their teams to truly coach and hold people accountable, nor do they have the energy and motivation to do the hard work that is good management," Barrett said.

Managers are finding new jobs — even after promotions

Sometimes, a promotion doesn't mean a worker will stick around. It may have an impact on whether someone decides to resign or not, a new report from ADP Research Institute found.

"A promotion means more responsibility," Richardson said. "That does tend to come with higher pay, but also maybe new job roles that a person may be less familiar with."

New results from 2019 through 2022 data published in ADP Research Institute's most recent Today at Work report found "a promotion increased a manager's risk of leaving more than it did for individual contributors, and that increased risk lasted longer."

While the pandemic-effects on the labor market likely drove churn for low-skill workers — who Richardson said "were six times more likely to leave in the first month after promotion than they would've been had they not been promoted" — the trends for managers are more long lasting, she said.

The ADP Research Institute report said the new results don't mean companies shouldn't promote managers.

"I think helping people not only understand the basics of management, but what their own personal management style is that is comfortable for them, for their industry, for their teams, is a really great opportunity in terms of career development and helping with this transition," Richardson told Insider.

The Gallup study found better leadership communication, increased training and development, additional coaching support to prevent burnout, and greater shared accountability can loosen the "manager squeeze" and allow managers to lead their teams more effectively. Companies that invested in manager development saw a 59% increase in engagement, a separate Gallup study found.

Are you a manager or employee who is stressed, thinking of quitting, or left a job after being promoted? Reach out to these reporters at mhoff@insider.com and nsheidlower@insider.com.