This month’s newsletter and blog topic is “The growing pressure on middle and upper management.” This pressure comes about from sweeping layoffs in the last year following the pandemic. The consequence has been major gaps in middle and upper management overburdening the remaining few.
The people laid off were, in large part, skilled managers and high performers. Their roles didn’t just disappear—they had to go somewhere. They did, landing on the shoulders of the middle and upper management left behind. Middle or upper managers previously may have had five major areas of responsibility, whereas now they are managing ten.
Now, where are the skilled managers and high performers that were laid off? Many have yet to return to the workplace and are unavailable to companies that could use them. Just where have they gone?
“Gardening Leave”
One reason these highly proficient former employees have remained out of circulation is that a number of them, from larger companies, were given what is now being referred to as “gardening leave.” This sort of humorous term is used to mean that a person has been laid off, then paid for several months to go home and remain unemployed (the joke being that they’re actually being paid to piddle about in their garden). To obtain their hefty severance package, the employee being laid off must sign an agreement not to work anywhere else—that is, for any of their former company’s competition. Former employees may not seek other work until the non-compete terms they agreed to have passed.
Meanwhile, they remain invisible in the employment marketplace, and other companies cannot avail themselves of these people’s considerable skills.
Early Retirement
During the pandemic, some well-paid employees, having to remain home during the lockdown, decided to stay home and take early retirement. Following the pandemic, as layoffs progressed, others probably “saw the writing on the wall” and decided to go ahead and retire.
The real tragedy is that many of these executives had skills and knowledge they obtained through years of experience. That knowledge wasn’t passed on, and once these executives or high performers had gone, it simply vanished. Current employees, moving up the ranks, have unfortunately not had access to this incredibly valuable knowledge.
Seeking Comparable Employment
Another reason these competent personnel have not returned to the workforce is that they have not been able to find positions at which they could make pay comparable to what they were making before.
For example, someone may have had a middle management position with a large company and were then laid off. If they were given gardening leave, they weren’t allowed to work for several months and were provided severance. After that, they began looking for employment, but comparable jobs could not be found.
Part of the problem is that small and medium businesses, while offering similar positions to the ones these managers held before, cannot afford to offer the high salaries that the larger companies were paying. Hence, these people continue to look.
The Solution
The only realistic solution for companies unable to find skilled recruits is for upper managers to apprentice their middle managers as rapidly as possible. To remove the “overburden” that has landed on upper management’s shoulders, apprenticing and training up-and-coming managers is the only available option.
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