Focus shifting to middle managers
CALGAR Y Middle managers face a double-edged sword as they progress in their careers, especially in Alberta where the falling price of oil has caused some companies to thin their management ranks to cut labour costs, according to some human resources experts.
The mass retirement of a large portion of the Baby Boomer generation is opening opportunities for career advancement for many gen-Xers in their 30s and 40s, but Boomers hanging in the labour force as consultants, contractors or working reduced hours are limiting that upward mobility — for now.
It’s a mixed bag of career opportunities and challenges for gen-Xers, with highly skilled millennials close on their heels, says Ian Cullwick, vice-president of human resources for research with the Conference Board of Canada.
“Middle managers have been taking it on the chin for decades,” he said. “In many cases, they have been the target of corporate restructuring and cutbacks. Yet, the middle management cadre, in this day and age, are the ones who actually get things done.”
Today’s middle managers are adapting to the times, including job uncertainty in Alberta’s oilpatch, by working more closely — through coaching and mentoring programs — to glean as much of the experience as they can from their older, more senior counterparts, said Cullwick.
“The more progressive employers communicate what career paths look like in terms of the skills, competencies, education and experience that it may require (to move up the ladder),” he said.
Brian Reidy, a managing consultant with Towers Watson’s Calgary office, said demographics are playing a bigger role in career development than ever before as the Boomers retire or find alternate work arrangements.
“Then there’s this shadow effect — this huge gap in age between that big population and the next big population, which is the millennials,” said Reidy.
The smaller population of gen X and gen Y employees is keen to fill that void, but they may not have the numbers to fill all those positions. “Those people are going to be sitting in a good position,” he added.
Thomas Davenport and Stephen Harding, both senior practitioners with Towers Watson, in their recent book, Manager Redefined, write that managers are the glue that holds organizations together. They take the vision and direction from the executive realm and turn it into results from front line employees.
“We challenge executives and human resources to see managers in a different light, as more than just message amplifiers, system executors, future executives, or … a necessary evil required mainly to keep employees in line,” the authors note. “We urge companies to think of their managers instead as a potential source of competitive advantage.”
When oil prices started to fall in the last half of 2014, organizations began “renewing” their investments into the attraction, retention and deployment of middle managers, said Cullwick, adding there is more recognition of how this group can “make or break” companies trying to weather economic uncertainty.
He predicts Baby Boomers will begin leaving the workforce en mass in the later part of this year in earnest.
“There are a number of very progressive employers out there who get the demographics (and) are doing their workforce planning, making the investments to deploy an emerging cadre of middle and senior managers,” said Cullwick.
Reidy uses a sports analogy to convey the importance of the role of managers during times of uncertainty. “A really good coach understands the individual player extremely well and is able to get the most out of that person,” he said.
Top performers working in “marginal” companies teetering on the brink of folding should start looking around. Top-performing companies, meanwhile, are using this time as an opportunity to secure the best talent in their industry, he added.