Yeah, its click-bait, but also a caution against the traditional role that middle management plays in an organisation. It seems to me that middle management gets a bad rap - routinely being stuck in the middle of delivering bad news to either side but often being the scape-goat in terms of accountability and responsibility.
As we begin gearing up for our early adoption trials at Huddlify HQ we've also been casting the net a little outside our realm and looking into some of the sentiments and market factors that have driven us up until now. It's safe to say that most organisations are offering/considering a form of the hybrid working model moving forward, whether that be 2/3 working week or 3/10 working fortnight. Here in Australia, The Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act 2022 (ref) which changes came into effect on June 6, 2023 mandate that employers must, upon request, "meet with the employee to discuss their request for flexible work" with all the usual mechanisms for resolution in the event of a dispute. The point is that employment is now balanced discussion about productivity over physical presence.
If we look to the US, we see the debate raging about "return-to-work/office" famously spearheaded by Elon Musk (ref) as well as this infamous tweet that went out mid 2022:
Elon Musk is somewhat of a rogue element in market for a multitude of reasons, but he's not the only one who feels this way. The underlying question of why he (and others) feel this way is the more pressing question that ladders back to middle management.
In any reasonably sized organisation, you will have middle management. This is due, in no small part, because the directors of the business can only be stretched so far. They need to delegate directives to an individual or group of people in order to carry out the various business objectives. SMEs that run a flat management orientation would probably do this if it weren't for budget and time constraints (I am personally guilty of this). Therefore middle management is charged with and responsible for the conversion of business objectives (abstract) into work tasks (empirical) by business directors and executives. The opposite is also true whereby middle management is responsible for the wellness of task-oriented employees and representing their needs up the organisational structure. It can be loosely held that middle management is a bi-directional lens for both parties.
We picked up on this early on in the R&D process - most employees don't interact with the CEO or senior executives, they interact most with their line manager - so its safe to say that an employee's world view of an organisation is based primarily on the relationship they have with their direct manager. Irrespective of how the company is viewed to the outside world, if the direct relationship between any 2 people in an resource/management situation is positive, then this general viewpoint of the organisation is reflected from the individual's perspective.
This phenomenon works all the way up to the CEO - so why the big debate about pushing people back to a centralised place of work? The short answer is Productivity. The longer answer is sufficient information required to gauge productivity. Who's getting left with the blame? You guessed it - the middle management layer. It's not that middle management is actually to blame, they simply do not have the tools and data to reasonably assess the situation. The traditional place of work baked this in: physical presence satisfied the work contract; you "showed-up". How does this function when working from home? Again, the short answer is, it doesn't.
There are numerous technologies (e.g. screen readers/input tracking/all day zoom calls, etc) that have attempted to address this, but its purely from a oversight and not a decentralised workforce perspective. People are, and rightly so, very resistant to this. So in the absence of insightful, contextual data in the face of productivity, reports are that work-from-home simply doesn't work.
...in the absence of insightful, contextual data in the face of productivity, reports are that work-from-home simply doesn't work.
Unfortunately, this isn't the full-picture. In the last 12 months, Australia (and I don't think we're alone) is going through a series of unprecedented inflationary increases which is quickly pointing towards crisis mode. Businesses and organisations are looking to quickly reduce and offset operational costs - typically staff and property expenses. Whilst there hasn't been a widely publicised study on occupancy rates in the major cities throughout Australia, this survey in the US shows the growing vacancies across the major central business districts:
I dare say that if we were to have a comparable report come out, it would show something similar. This trend towards vacating offices in order to reduce costs - alongside cutting staff, is a tangible financial plan that's clearly being implemented en masse by organisational executives.
So on one hand we have an ongoing productivity discussion about coming back to the office and on the other hand a shrinking pool of places to work in order to cut costs. With all these markers; the recent legislative changes, the wide-spread debate on return to a centralised place of work, and the growing property vacancies around the globe, one thing is certain - work-from-home/hybrid or whatever you want to call it, is here to stay.
So when I said "remove middle management" I meant "remove the middle management information blockage". Start investigating and investing in the necessary tools to enable Work-from-Anywhere, whether that's the office, a cafe or the back of your van. Remove the anxiety of work-from-home and Just Know. Here is where our platform, Huddlify, fits into the picture and enabling productivity being one of our core values.
I pose this question in closing - If you had the relevant insight and information to gauge and manage the productivity of your workforce, would you care where your tribe worked from?