Article Summary
Why middle managers are burning out, and how this impacts organisational performance.
How emotional labour, unclear expectations, and under-support create systemic leadership failure.
Practical steps to support manager wellbeing, including training, psychological safety, and realistic spans of control.
There is no job quite like people management. The expectations placed on managers today are vast: they’re asked to coach, mediate, inspire, safeguard mental health, lead on diversity, drive productivity and maintain team morale – all while hitting performance targets in an uncertain economic climate. Yet the support structures around them often remain thin.
Middle managers, in particular, are caught in a squeeze. They carry the emotional weight of their teams while absorbing the commercial pressure from above. According to our new research 36% of leaders say meeting business targets while managing people is demanding while 34% say balancing performance and wellbeing are a challenge.1
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found 53% of managers reporting they were burned out at work in 2022,2 the last time this was measured, while earlier this year business publications were full of headlines about 2025 being the year of the ‘manager crash’ as burnout and lack of support reach a breaking point.3
These figures are often treated as individual wellbeing concerns. But the impact is systemic. A manager’s mental health directly influences how well they support their teams and therefore how well the business performs. Good management doesn’t just keep organisations running. It enables people to flourish. And that starts with making sure managers themselves are in a position to thrive.
The hidden cost of emotional overload
It’s easy to underestimate the emotional labour that comes with managing others. Supporting a grieving colleague, navigating underperformance, fielding flexibility requests, responding to mental health disclosures, these are human challenges rather than operational tasks. They require empathy, judgment and resilience. They also require time and energy that managers may not have, especially when they’re expected to be both culture-builders and delivery machines.
Yet organisations still tend to treat emotional skills as innate, rather than essential capabilities that need to be developed and supported. When managers are left to absorb this complexity without backing the result is more than burnout. It’s disengagement, inconsistency and, in some cases, attrition.
The cost of poor management practices is well established. Oft-quoted Gallup research from a decade ago shows that 70% of variance in team engagement is driven by the manager.4 Investors in People’s own data shows that 86% of employees rank having a supportive manager as the most important driver of job satisfaction, more than pay, benefits or career progression.5
Importantly, the impact extends beyond engagement to productivity. As Professor Sir Cary Cooper notes: “Thinking of my own career, I know that I delivered the most to the people who valued, mentored and trusted me. Those are the people who drove my productivity.”
When managers are supported employees thrive. When they are neglected organisations pay the price.
This isn’t new but it is growing
The pressure on managers is not new but it has intensified. In the late 1980s, researchers were already identifying so-called ‘reluctant managers’ – individuals promoted into leadership roles who felt fundamentally misaligned with what the job demanded. Thirty years on the situation is more pronounced.
Recent UK research shows that only around 48% of employees now aspire to management roles, with younger workers even less inclined.6 Among Generation Z over half would prefer to advance their careers without taking on formal people management responsibilities.7 Many cite the emotional toll and lack of proper support as major deterrents.
Without systemic change, the reluctance to lead will only grow, deepening the leadership gap across organisations.
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We need a new mindset
The traditional approach to management development has prioritised functional competence: budgets, planning, delivery. These skills matter but they don’t prepare managers for the relational and emotional demands of the role. Nor do they help managers deal with the psychological pressure of being responsible for other people’s wellbeing in increasingly uncertain environments.
Supporting managers also means creating an environment of psychological safety, not just for their teams but for the managers themselves. When managers can admit when they are struggling, ask for help and share concerns without fear of judgment they are far better positioned to lead with authenticity and resilience. Psychological safety isn’t a ‘nice to have’: it’s a foundation for healthy leadership cultures.
The We Invest in People framework sets out a clear expectation that organisations develop leadership capability in line with purpose and values. That includes creating a culture where line managers are equipped to lead and support others, not just technically but emotionally and ethically. Building emotionally intelligent pathways for leadership is essential infrastructure for the future of work.
Reframing manager wellbeing as strategic infrastructure
There is often a reluctance to focus on manager wellbeing, as if acknowledging the pressure undermines authority. But ignoring it is more damaging. Managers are people first and when they’re unsupported their teams feel it.
As we point out in our white paper The Broken Ladder: Why managers are avoiding manager roles – and how to fix it : “Managers need the scaffolding, space and support to manage well – and all too often the pressures of everyday commercial delivery push this down the agenda.”
More than a third of business leaders surveyed for the white paper say balancing employee wellbeing with business targets is one of the most demanding parts of management. The tension between performance and people support is real. But it is not an excuse for inaction.
Organisations that thrive in the next decade will not be those that load more onto managers and expect resilience to be endless. They will be those that equip managers to work sustainably, humanely, and successfully.
View from the Community
“At the heart of our organisation is the core value of Care — a principle that has guided our commitment to the physical, mental and financial wellbeing of our people for many years. This is woven into everything we do, across all levels of the business.
We believe in the importance of listening to managers and giving them an outlet to discuss any concerns they may have both in and out of work. In addition to a structured approach, we have an environment where senior leaders spend 121 time with Managers to understand their individual situation and any additional support needed.
We take formal feedback through our engagement survey then hold tailored focus groups where managers discuss any parts of their role/work environment which may impact them. We encourage wellbeing through monitoring holiday bookings, encouraging time off, providing occupational health for any health concerns and offering formal counselling when needed. We’ve even made changes to our leadership development programme to reduce the impact on wellbeing. We allow managers the flexibility to plan their work to give time and space for personal activities to boost wellbeing.
We provide regular wellbeing communications and recently our Operations Director shared a video reiterating the importance of wellbeing and the ways in which he does this.”
Laura Bunn
HR Director, Roadchef
Practical steps to support manager wellbeing
Rather than expecting resilience to be innate organisations need to build it into the system. These actions can help.
- Start with clarity: Define what good management looks like, aligned with organisational values not just output.
- Make wellbeing a management metric: Measure how supported managers feel.
- Normalise coaching: Embed reflective practice and peer coaching into leadership development.
- Provide mental health literacy training: Equip managers to recognise burnout signs early.
- Reduce unnecessary admin: Free up space for managers to focus on people leadership.
- Set realistic span of control: Ensure team sizes allow for real human connection.
- Recognise emotional labour: Value coaching, crisis support and human-centred leadership activities.
- Encourage upward feedback: Give managers access to feedback on the support they provide.
- Create manager communities: Build peer learning and resilience through connection.
- Invest in development continuously: Leadership is a practice, not a one-off training event.
Conclusion
Understanding and supporting the emotional wellbeing of managers is essential for building effective, resilient and thriving leadership at every level of an organisation.
As one employee captured perfectly in our research: “A supportive manager really changes everything.”
To build workplaces that are capable of weathering the uncertainty and complexity ahead we need to ensure our managers are not only equipped but cared for. Because when managers break, it is the whole organisation that feels the fracture.
This article is inspired by the theme of The Hidden Cost of Bad Management, which will be explored by psychologist Kimberley Wilson at the upcoming Investors in People Make Work Better conference. Join us there to take the conversation further and to help build healthier, more sustainable leadership cultures across the UK.
Sources
- Investors in People 2025: The Broken Ladder: Why managers are avoiding manager roles – and how to fit it.
- Microsoft’s Work Trend Index https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work-is-just-work
- 2025 is set to bring a ‘manager crash’ as burnout and lack of support reach a breaking point https://fortune.com/2024/11/24/middle-manager-crash-2025-prediction-burnout/
- Gallup: State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- Investors in People 2024 When the Perks Don’t Work https://www.investorsinpeople.com/knowledge/when-the-perks-dont-work/
- CV Genius: 2025 Future of Work Survey: https://cvgenius.com/blog/career-advice/future-of-work-survey
- Robert Walters https://www.robertwalters.co.uk/insights/news/blog/conscious-unbossing.html
