Source: theHRDIRECTOR
Date: April 2007
Author: Peter Cheese, Managing Director of Accenture's Human Performance Practice

Responsible for the day to day decisions and actions that keep organisations running, middle managers play a critical role in business success. However, as Peter Cheese, Managing Director of Accenture’s Human Performance Practice explains, Accenture’s Annual Middle Managers survey shows that they have become dissatisfied and frustrated and many are actively looking for new opportunities.

The survey of more than 1,400 middle managers in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, China, Malaysia and Singapore, found that middle managers are:

• Feeling unsupported when it comes to benefits, compensation and managing the challenges of daily work life
• Struggling to balance work with their personal lives and feeling frustrated by a lack of a clear career path
• Considering or actively looking for new jobs.
• UK middle managers, in particular, are more dissatisfied than ever:
• Dissatisfaction in this group rose from 12% in 2005 to 22% in 2006
• Those highly satisfied has decreased from 43% to 27%.

Given a choice of 10 adjectives that might describe their companies, the largest share of UK respondents (41%) selected “mismanaged” to describe their organisations, an increase from 31% last year, and 25% selected “successful.” Other descriptions, such as ethical, aggressive and intelligent were mentioned by just five per cent of UK respondents. Asked to rate the performance of their organisations, UK respondents gave the highest marks to working conditions (46%), but they gave lower scores to their companies’ management of compensation (cited by 12%), prospects for advancement (27%) and encouraging innovation (28%).

It’s clear that senior management must find ways to engage their middle managers. They can address most issues cited in the survey with clearer communication, by engaging directly with them and providing well defined performance goals linked to rewards and career progression.

By tailoring HR and training support according to the importance of their workforces, companies’ middle managers will receive what they need to be successful. Likewise, executives must be engaged in HR issues so that middle managers can be ‘heard’. Those companies that engage with this vital stratum of their workforce will be those with long term business advantage.