Welcome back. Team leaders, people managers and front-line supervisors have the same message for HR teams these days:

Their people are leaving in droves, and in many instances there isn’t much one can do about it;

The manager is picking up the slack of multiple vacated positions while striving to engage and keep employees who have stayed;

The manager is trying to be a leader and a team player, contending with constant emails and meetings, and coping with new HR curveballs from vaccine mandates and flexwork policies.

There are 1.6 million such managers across the country, according to Zippia, a data science resource that compiles employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau.

One in three of these so-called middle managers said they feel burnout very often or always, according to a Gallup survey released late last year. In contrast, the same survey found that executives and individual contributors were reporting lower levels of stress.

Similarly, diagnosed depression increased for managers in 2021 but was relatively unchanged for individual contributors and declined for leaders.

“Middle managers often find themselves not at the bottom rung and but also not in positions of influence, which leads to a feeling of powerlessness,” said Alyssa Lahar, chief human resources officer at ZoomInfo, a subscription-based database service.

• Develop relevant programming: ZoomInfo has a Manager Accelerator program that helps middle managers rationalize and reconcile the work that comes with this level. The company also offers semimonthly executive roundtables, where middle managers feel heard and valued.
   
• Provide coaching: Interface Inc. provides personalized coaching recommendations. “They can use the results to adopt different approaches to motivate and keep their employees,” said Allyne Ettner, the director of global learning, talent and change management. She cited an example of how a manager attentive to details might be perceived as a micromanager by their direct reports. She would speak with this manager about their strengths, including those that might potentially be overused, to help them maintain a healthy level of self-awareness.
   
• Use digital collaboration tools: These tools go a long way because they fast track meaningful interaction between managers and their teams. Interface uses Slack and Microsoft Teams to facilitate quick questions and answers. For real-time team collaboration, you might also consider a tool like Miro, which simulates brainstorming together in a conference room.
   
• Boost engagement: Middle managers must understand their own career mobility options while also taking advantage of life rafts available to help them survive the roles they are in today. Consider employer-sponsored mental-health support, compelling professional development opportunities, and access to flexwork and other alternative work arrangements.

A recent MetLife study found that managers between the ages of  26 and 40 are significantly more likely to say they are burned out (42%) than managers of any other generation (34% Gen Z, 27% Gen X, and 21% boomers) and individual contributors (30%).

This could be due in part to the fact that millennial managers are really stepping up to help their teams survive and thrive through the lengthy Covid-19 pandemic.

🎥 WATCH: As big U.S. banks, corporations and tech startups encourage workers to shut off email and unplug to curb resignations, WSJ looks at how “right to unplug” measures have affected productivity at companies in Europe.

For managers, that means having charge of workers who have had completely different professional experiences with less visibility into the full profile of individual employees because of limited or missing in-person interactions.

Profile of a generation: Many of these employees are Gen Z, born roughly in 1997, and are digital natives. Though they embrace remote work, this population that will make up nearly a third of the U.S. civilian workforce within a decade has reported increased anxiety and depression because of it. Young adulthood is already a lonely time, experts say, which can compound problems of more disconnected lives.

Understanding the gaps: These workers are missing out on learning from older colleagues and spontaneous facetime with higher ups, as well the ability to develop friendships with professional peers and a robust network of work allies. Some may even be missing out on assignments or be otherwise overlooked by superiors, and there is greater opportunity for mistrust absent meaningful bonds among colleagues.

Speaking the language: Tech fluency of Gen Z workers means they are very comfortable using videoconferencing and other digital-communications tools to forge stronger ties to bosses and coworkers. In search of professional connection and guidance, some of them are employing tactics that might not have been viewed favorably before remote work became the norm–or by colleagues of a different generation–such as sending cold-call emails and sliding into the DMs of stars in their field.

• Six people you meet in the pandemic workplace (WSJ)
   
• American employees seek the flexibility to deal with personal issues when needed (LifeWorks)
   
• How employers can help with our mental health crisis and ‘collective trauma’ (Forbes)
   
• Need to keep Gen Z workers happy? Hire a ‘generational consultant’ (New York Times)

📅 April 12: WSJ Jobs Summit: Succeed in the Search, a free online event. Agenda and registration

Alexandra Levit is a business and workplace author and speaker. She is the weekly columnist anchoring The Workplace Report. Yogita Patel curated and edited this newsletter.

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