Organizations are quietly rewriting the role of manager.
Across industries, large employers are flattening structures and increasing the number of people reporting to each supervisor. Big tech companies, for example, have eliminated layers of middle management to expand team sizes and accelerate decision-making. Amazon has publicly discussed reducing the number of management roles to lower costs and streamline oversight. Analyses of recent layoff waves suggest that middle managers make up a disproportionately high share of role reductions, a trend some observers now refer to as the “Great Flattening.”
How Engaged Is the Team?
For small and medium-sized teams, higher employee engagement is linked to increased employee productivity and wellbeing and lower turnover. For large teams, engagement is positively associated with higher wellbeing, but the relationship between employee engagement, productivity and turnover for these large teams varies by industry.
For example, among large teams in the services, transportation and healthcare industries, teams with high engagement scores are more productive than those with lower engagement scores. For other sectors, organizations with large team sizes have substantial variability in the association between engagement, productivity and turnover.
For these other industries, the relationship between engagement, productivity and turnover varies widely. Some large teams are more productive and have lower turnover when engagement is high; others do not. This variability means that for very large teams (20 or more employees), other factors come into play. Organizational leaders should consider the type of work being done, opportunities for coworkers to collaborate and some of the additional considerations discussed next.
Key takeaway: Team size is only as effective as the engagement behind it. Highly engaged teams of 12 or more workers who are supported by effective management — double the current median of six workers per team — can thrive, while poorly managed teams struggle, even when small.
How Much Time Do Managers Spend on Individual Contributor Work?
Individual contributor work encompasses tasks that fall outside a manager’s core leadership responsibilities. For example, a store supervisor might also stock shelves or check out customers; a bank manager may serve customers directly; and a research director or technology manager might contribute hands-on to the same projects as the teams they lead. These types of managers are often called “player-coaches.”
In Gallup’s U.S. study, 97% of managers report having some individual contributor responsibilities in addition to leading others. Managers spend a median of 40% of their time on individual contributor work. Those who exceed that threshold tend to lead smaller teams: nearly half manage fewer than five people, and about three-fourths manage fewer than 10.
Managers who spend less than 40% of their time on individual contributor work tend to maintain higher engagement than the average (37%), regardless of the number of workers reporting to them. Managers who exceed the individual contributor threshold have lower engagement, and this gets worse as the number of workers they manage increases.
Overall, managers are struggling more today than in the past. Compared with a few years ago, more managers report burnout, stress, job-seeking behavior and lower engagement. Contributing factors include rapid workplace change, cost pressures, a cooling and uneven labor market, and rising expectations of productivity per person.
When organizations widen spans of control without reducing managers’ individual workloads, they are not just redrawing the organizational chart — they risk weakening day-to-day performance management by compromising their managers’ own performance.
Key takeaway: Independent of other considerations, managers who are extreme player-coaches can stay engaged when managing a small team. But as their span of control widens, managers with higher levels of individual contributor workloads may struggle to balance their roles effectively. This is within the broader context of a decline in engagement among managers, regardless of team size, in the U.S. over the past few years.
Do Managers Have the Right Talent for the Role?
Talented managers often rise to a challenge in situations where less talented managers struggle. When faced with very large teams (25 or more direct reports) and a heavy individual contributor workloads (greater than 40%), people with high management talent have higher engagement. Managers with medium and low talent show lower engagement as team size and individual contributor workload increase.
Work location also matters. When considering the managerial talent level and work location, a growing number of direct reports can negatively affect the engagement level of all managers, particularly those who work from home or in a hybrid setting. For on-site managers, increasing team size has a minimal impact on their engagement, although more talented managers consistently have higher engagement.
Key takeaway: Manager talent trumps span of control. When organizations use scientific methods to identify the right talent in managers, those managers can successfully lead larger teams and stay engaged in their work as team size grows. This helps fix declining manager engagement and reduces the number of managers an organization needs. And because manager engagement is strongly tied to employee engagement, the benefits extend across the whole team. Still, even highly talented managers who are fully remote face limits on how many people they can manage effectively. Organizations need to manage heavy individual contributor responsibilities situationally based on both the manager’s talent and the volume of non-managerial work they have.
Do Managers Give Employees Meaningful, Regular Feedback?
Gallup discovered that one habit for a manager in today’s workplace matters more than most others: providing meaningful feedback to each employee at least once per week. This practice nearly triples the percentage of engaged employees, which then influences many other performance outcomes.
Yet it remains uncommon. In a recent study, Gallup found that among nearly 15,000 employees, 16% said the last conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful. According to employees, meaningful manager feedback includes recognition or appreciation for recent work, collaboration and relationships, discussion of current goals and priorities, and a focus on employees’ strengths. These conversations don’t have to be long; 15 to 30 minutes, done consistently, is enough.
Across seven studies representing 44,025 responses, Gallup asked employees whether they had received meaningful feedback in the past week, gathered information about team size and measured engagement. Employees were highly engaged (about seven in 10) regardless of team size when they strongly agreed they had received meaningful feedback. When they did not strongly agree (responses from 1 to 4 on a 5-point scale), only one in four were engaged.
These findings are generally consistent regardless of the team’s work location. Hybrid employees tend to have the highest engagement, but for all work location situations, those who report receiving meaningful feedback in the last week are substantially more engaged.
Key takeaway: In today’s workplace, where employees feel increasingly disconnected from their organizations, managers’ open communication with employees is more important than the number of direct reports they have. Weekly, meaningful feedback supports employee engagement regardless of team size.
