Good morning!
Companies are preaching the importance of employee productivity, and middle managers are feeling the pressure.
Already dealing with the brunt of layoffs and heightened scrutiny over their organizational value, middle managers are also getting tasked with picking up the slack of laid-off colleagues and driving greater output with fewer resources.
My colleague Lila MacLellan covered the squeeze these mid-level bosses experience and detailed how leaders can better address these pains in a recent piece for Fortune.
“Rather than try to squeeze more out of employees...the better approach is to 'fill people up.' Not only is that the most humane and empathetic response, but it’s also going to benefit the organization: Employees who feel inspired, rested, and secure are more likely to perform well."
MacLellan notes that after layoffs, the knee-jerk reaction is for companies to discourage people from discussing what happened. "They really fear communication," Dawna Ballard, professor of organizational communication at the University of Texas at Austin, tells her, adding that leaders "should know that no research across time has ever shown that less communication is better.”
MacLellan highlights that, by contrast, "more communication typically leads to better outcomes, so managers can ease employee anxiety by giving them the time and space to speak freely."
Ballard also warns against piling onto employees' workloads or indirectly signaling an expectation to work longer hours. Research shows that increasing work hours to improve productivity has the opposite effect, MacLellan writes. "The change happens quickly—in weeks, not months—so managers must model strong boundary-setting and explicitly push for their teams to avoid overwork."
Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton
