Transformations in Work: The Evolving Role of Managers Post-Covid

Covid-19 has brought dramatic changes to our relationship with work and effectively led to a new relationship with work and life. As a product designer who has managed people on various projects, I've witnessed these changes firsthand. The shift was first felt at the management level, with mid-level managers, like myself, being at the forefront of responding to new needs and desires. Here is an analysis of these changes, with updates on the statistics and data.

An Emerging Role

Mid-level managers now face much heavier teams, the pressure to justify their existence, and reporting issues. According to an INSEE survey, 68% of them saw their workload increase significantly since the crisis. It is in this new and more difficult balance that the need for new skills appears, first and foremost the ability to navigate skillfully between control and letting go.

Managers must deal with the personalities of many team members, a problem mentioned by 75% of respondents to a Harvard Business Review survey.

The Effects of the Pandemic

COVID-19 has been an accelerator of pre-existing trends. Remote work is a long-standing trend in business that has suddenly become socially acceptable; the Pew Research Center reported that by mid-2020, the number of occasional remote workers had increased by 73%. This has increased the need for managers to acquire remote management skills, as well as skills to support their subordinates from a moral and psychological standpoint.

Remote Work: Constraint or Future

Remote work is both an opportunity and a challenge for management. McKinsey says that 26% of employees would like to work in a hybrid work arrangement, but hybrid work will require better management capabilities and clear communications. Sixty percent of companies that have adopted remote work find that their productivity has increased, but this productivity excess is absorbed by new management issues.

Performance Management and Psychological Well-being

It is now a role of managers to pay attention to employees' mental health. Performance evaluations are now daily feedback, not once a year as they used to be. According to a Gallup survey, 54% of employees want continuous feedback on their performance. Mental health has also become a leading concern, with a 30% increase in reported burnout cases since 2020.

AI Assistance

The use of artificial intelligence in managing operations provides solutions to free managers from tasks. AI can be used to automate some administrative tasks so that managers have extra time to manage relationships more humanely. Another Gartner survey indicates that by 2025, 45% of organizations would like to implement artificial intelligence in their management tools.

Transformation of Expectations of a Generation

The aspirations of young people have changed compared to previous generations. In the 1980s, 90 percent of graduating students aspired to management positions. Today, 15 to 37 percent of young graduates, according to an OECD survey, pursue this aspiration. Young people aspire to a balance between work and personal life and are not motivated by traditional management positions.

Final Thoughts

Operation is an unstable juggling act between operational management, required technology, and technological capacity. The pandemic has served as both a catalyst and a trend revealer, and the effect of these combined factors is that managers must evolve and transform at a rapid pace. Their ability to adopt new leadership styles, master workers, and master new, complicated, cutting-edge technologies will literally be a matter of life or death for them. After all, since the emergence of the coronavirus, managers' work has been more difficult and more vital than ever for business survival and employee health.