Record number of managers seeking help for stress and anxiety. Hybrid and flexible working arrangements too hard
According to Christina Foxwell, a life and business coach and self-help author, flexible and hybrid working arrangements may be good for employees, but they are proving nearly impossible for most managers and business owners to cope with.
I have been working with managers, executives, business owners and board members all across the country and the globe for many years helping them to hone their leadership style and overcome career and workplace challenges, and I have never seen things so bad.
I am being contacted daily by business executives wanting help to cope with difficult organisational issues and management challenges.
Basically, managers are finding it nearly impossible to manage staff remotely and to maintain cohesion and workplace culture with staff straddling work from home and hybrid working arrangements.
Regardless of what is being reported in the press, organisations are finding that their culture is decaying fast. Targets are being hit, but they are not being exceeded and creativity and innovation is dying.
Managing performance and having difficult performance conversations is also proving impossible for many managers.
Organisations are going to lose good managers and leaders if organisations do not act to address the needs of executives.
Managers need more support, and they also need help dealing with the increased complexities and challenges of managing a distributed and flexible workforce.
While the work may not have changed, the way in which managers engage with people and the nature of engagement has changed significantly. Phone, email and on-screen conversations are not nearly as authentic as in-person encounters.
This is leading to a rapid deterioration of healthy manager staff relations. It is also impacting the ability of managers to develop meaningful and important connections with staff. How can managers manage performance if they are not able to build authentic relationships with their people. The answer is you can’t.
Here are the key areas where managers are struggling:
Company culture is eroding
When people work together in the same physical space, it is easy to absorb and embrace company culture. Culture is created through interactions, observations, communications, behaviours and actions. When working alone or remotely it is difficult to immerse yourself in an environment of culture. Culture is what sets organisations apart. It is also what dictates how an organisation operates and the values it embraces.
Without culture, people are not connected by common values and principles. In short, they are not connected.
Work life balance
Staff are increasingly wanting to work different hours or take time out to deal with personal priorities.
Managing priorities and deliverables in an environment where everyone wants to work different hours and in different ways is creating havoc for managers trying to meet targets and achieve deliverables.
Work life balance has become an excuse to avoid responsibility and accountability. It is difficult to challenge and even harder to manage.
Single source of truth
Despite workplaces having systems in place, the challenge with staff working different hours and sending documents around for approval is that things become messy and challenging to keep track of.
Unless everyone is working diligently to follow processes and procedures, using the required systems and undertaking work in a timely manner, obsolescence creeps in and version control is difficult. This causes all sorts of issues including mistakes and delays.
Managing productivity and performance
While many businesses have systems in place to manage productivity and performance, staff are blaming issues on technology, lack of appropriate systems and support and other organisational deficiencies.
Managers are finding it very difficult to manage all aspects of performance across such a diversified workplace environment.
While organisations shifted quickly to implement tech to enable staff to work remotely they did not address the human needs of managers to navigate the complexities of engaging with and managing staff remotely.
Until this aspect of organisational business is addressed we will continue to see managers experience heightened levels of stress and anxiety and many will exit altogether.
Christina Foxwell is a life and business coach and prominent self-help author, plus the founder and CEO of Ignite Purpose.
This article has so many red flags. Clearly showing managers have a pointless role and aren’t needed because people can get their work done without being micromanaged and makes amazing employees leave. If the work is getting done what is the issue? It’s all been proven that people worked harder at home because less distractions, better concentration and flow, the only issue was they had no boundaries with work time, breaks, clocking off etc. and saying a work life balance is an excuse? Weren’t we all just talking about about having better work life balances, “mental health is so important” conversations. And the whole connection part, never heard of the internet? Chat? Zoom? It’s 2022, the best connections I’ve ever made was over the internet. The constant distractions in an office environment, I do 50% less because everyone wants to go for coffee, have a chat, laugh, giggle. that is not connection, that is a waste of time.
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I feel this article is trying to bait me. A few things:
1) if you can’t figure out how to forge connections without someone standing beside me, in the year 2022, that’s on you. Do you suffer from object permanence?
2) managers referred to here don’t seem to have well-founded, well-documented evidence that people in flexible working arrangements are underperforming. They do seem to have trust issues. Did they hire the wrong people? Or are they themselves the wrong people?
3) the hand-wringing about flexibility is baloney. Managers can and do accommodate many things: childcare and other caring responsibilities, pregnancy, disability and more. Say it with your chest: you don’t want to accommodate flexible work in the pandemic because you don’t think it’s a legitimate reason.
4) lol
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the real question here is who cares? – this article implies the managers involved didn’t care about the wellbeing of their staff until they had no choice and were forced to capitulate to their needs. now executives say they’re unhappy that they’re being treating like an employee and not an authority…
the obvious lesson here is that organisations and managers need to reduce pressure on their staff, and set more reasonable targets – then they’ll be less stressed.
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I wonder how many of those over-stressed managers are those that have been promoted before they were ready, and are also having to do a large part of their previous role at the same time due to the well documented talent shortage?
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