One in Four Managers Is Considering Leaving Their Jobs

Ciphr’s survey of 500 managers, with people management responsibilities, found that the majority like (52%) or love (32%) the work they do, and most (85%) like managing people.

Top 10 things that cause people managers the most challenges in their jobs:

• Having ‘difficult’ conversations: 32% of surveyed managers
• Increased stress: 30%
• Managing grievances, disciplinary procedures, dismissals or redundancies: 25%
• Managing challenging or problematic behaviour within their team: 24%
• More meetings: 21%
• Extra admin and workload: 21%
• Enforcing policies, rules, ways of working or business decisions that they don’t agree with: 20%
• Managing unrealistic expectations from their boss or leadership: 19%
• Absence management: 19%
• Being a mediator / dealing with interpersonal friction or conflict: 18%
• Giving and receiving critical feedback: 18%

What could convince managers to stay?

There are many things that employers can do to help support their people managers and give them more reasons to stay. C

Practical steps that organisations can take to help support their managers, include:

• Encourage all staff to disconnect from work out of hours and take regular breaks and holidays. Leaders need to role model healthy work behaviours, such as taking leave and not working when sick, and not normalise presenteeism or a long hours culture.
• Equip managers with the skills and tools to support their teams. Invest in regular management training and personalised development, and embed the skills taught through knowledge hubs and AI coaching.
• Regularly review workloads and deadlines to ensure work is equitably distributed. Regular 1:1s can help identify potential issues before they escalate, enabling line managers to intervene and provide support.
• Clearly communicate organisational goals, values and responsibilities, so everyone knows what’s expected of them and why. People work better when they know where their organisation is going and how their role and objectives contribute to getting there.