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As managers are asked to do more, they’re being less responsive to staff, causing widespread disengagement.

Overworked managers keep ghosting their teams

[Photos: Alene Pierro/Adobe Stock; Daniele Levis Pelusi/Unsplash[

BY Jared Lindzon4 minute read

As managers struggle under heightened pressure to do more with less, their staff are feeling ignored, and checking out.

The vicious cycle is documented across numerous studies and surveys which suggest an increasingly fast-moving and complex business environment is causing senior leaders to put greater pressure on managers, and those struggles are trickling down to everyone else. 

“Employees are being given more expectations, teams have been restructured and reorganized, budgets have been cut, so managers are being asked to do more with less, and faster,” explains Gallup’s director of research and strategy for workplace management, Ben Wigert.

Wigert says those heightened expectations have made it harder for managers to give frontline staff the time and attention they need, causing those employees to either quiet quit or leave the organization entirely, further fueling the cycle. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jared Lindzon is a freelance journalist, public speaker and Fast Company contributor who has reported on technology and the future of work for over a decade. Through that period his writing has been featured in many of the world’s top news publications—including the BBC, The Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, covering a broad range of subject matters, from entrepreneurship and technology to entertainment and politics. More


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