44 Monday February 21 2022 | the times
Business
four, alongside the five people she
mentors. But she has revised her
expectations of herself as leader.
“The pandemic allowed me to take
stock. Before, I led a really stressful
life: up early to come up to London,
travelling overseas quite a lot, not
getting home until eight or nine at
night,” she said. “It has given me the
chance to think about self-
development and understand what is
more important to me.”
Jellyfish, which hit sales of
£198 million in 2020, has 40 offices
internationally and employs more
than 2,300 people. It overhauled its
management structure before the
pandemic to remove line managers.
Employers that try to reinstate a
five-day return to the office policy
will regret it, according to Francke at
the CMI. “People will leave — it’s a
tight labour market and people are
resigning for jobs that will give them
enough rights and respect,” she said.
Gillian Wilmot, chairman of the
listed media services group Digital
Zoo, believes that the changes
accelerated by the pandemic are
permanent. “The idea that you have
to have people sitting in front of you
to manage them is quite prehistoric.”Hannah Dempsey, marketing director atWe’re happy with hybrid
but need help, say bosses
P
eople in management roles
are struggling with the
demands of the workplace
revolution accelerated by the
pandemic, a survey of more
than 1,200 managers conducted for
The Times has found.
As more companies adopt hybrid
and flexible working practices, thesurvey highlights the strain felt by
people in middle management roles.
Some 43 per cent of those surveyed
said that hybrid working had made it
harder to manage their teams, while
40 per cent said that it had made no
difference, leaving only 17 per cent
who said that things had improved.
More than half commented that
their ability to build meaningful
relationships with their team had
declined, while 69 per cent said that
inducting recruits was more difficult.
Those polled were predominantly
managers in large companies.
The findings prompted the
Chartered Management Institute
(CMI) to call for employers to invest
more in training their managers to
help them adapt to hybrid working.
“The human aspect of management
is more important than ever,” said its
chief executive, Ann Francke. “We
need to retrain people. I firmly
believe you can have an excellent
bond with your team if you manage
well in a hybrid world.”
More positively, 54 per cent of the
managers said they had seen
productivity increase during remote
and hybrid working. Fewer than a
fifth reported a decline.
The strain on working women in
the pandemic is reflected in the
survey. Just over half the female
managers polled said that their
wellbeing had declined, compared
with 41 per cent of men. A majority of
the managers (57 per cent) believed
that the wellbeing of their teams had
also declined.
The scale of change has been
greater at smaller companies than at
larger ones. Some 62 per cent of those
surveyed managed teams working
flexibly prior to the pandemic,
compared with 47 per cent at small to
medium enterprises.
Heather Connearn, an executive
director at the marketing agency
Space & Time, recognised many of
the findings. Her business, which had
revenues of £8.4 million last year and
employs 135 people across the UK,
has had to shift quickly from a five-
day, office-based working week with
traditional 9am to 5.30pm hours to
first remote, and latterly hybrid
working. It currently operates three
days in the office and two from home.
Connearn, 41, said that she thought
middle managers had been hit
hardest by the new ways of working.
“We have changed more in the last
two years than we did in the previous
ten. It is the speed of change,
updating processes and how we work,
and adapting your own skill set that
has been the most challenging thing.”
Space & Time has responded by
investing in training and project
management software, and revising
its guidance on how it expects
managers to operate. Tools such as
video and chat have proved useful but
the company realised that it had to
consolidate where planning and
project management took place. It
has also emphasised the importance
of regular verbal contact with a team.
“We have not resolved all the
issues,” Connearn said, but she
remains supportive, acknowledging
hybrid working as “a really positive
change for women in our business”.
Hannah Dempsey, 38, a marketing
director at the London digital
advertising agency Jellyfish, is also a
fan. She said hybrid working had not
altered her ability to lead her team ofBusiness Times Enterprise Network
T
enterprise
network
going for
growth
A Times survey shows
middle managers are
feeling the strain from
new working practices,
writes Richard Tyler