Why it’s time we showed our bosses some support

There’s a problem in Australian workplaces right now and all the signs are pointing in one direction. No matter which way you look at it, managers are in trouble.

Managing other people is hard, and it’s often not acknowledged just how difficult it is. When you move into the management level, you’re usually promoted above your friends and colleagues into a highly demanding role where people look to you for guidance and answers, even if you don’t really have any.

We often give our bosses a bad rap, but they’re often under immense pressure too.Credit: Rob Homer

And now there’s new research that backs up what many of us already know: being a manager is stressful, and it’s only getting more so.

When you’re responsible for other people, pressure quickly mounts up from both ends. Underneath you in the pecking order are workers who expect you to guide them through a fast-changing environment, holding you accountable for their career and wellbeing. At the same time, more senior people above you exert pressure to ensure the area you’re responsible for is hitting its targets.

It’s little wonder that many of the warning signs concerning the health of managers in the workplace are flashing amber right now. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace research has found that half of all Australian managers are experiencing high levels of stress every single day.

“We are asking a lot of managers,” says Claire de Carteret, Gallup’s APAC managing director. “Our productivity is quite stagnant in Australia, so we are asking managers to do more with less.”

If we don’t directly address these issues, managers will continue to crack.

Managers in the workplace are currently feeling the heat from adapting to changing ways of doing business (especially the rise of AI), as well as managing the output of their team and themselves.

“They’re really squished in the middle of all of these different elements,” says Claire, citing the need to have wellbeing conversations with their staff, drive team results, care for their team’s psychological safety and hit all their personal goals at the same time.

Within any business, managers are often the lifeblood. According to the same Gallup research, 70 per cent of team engagement can be attributed to the manager, meaning that when this layer of the workforce is properly engaged, it has a domino effect on the rest of the business.

However, it also means that when managers are finding it tough, that flows through to everyone around them. And that’s what is happening right now as managers, especially older and female managers, have seen some of the largest drops in their wellbeing over the past year.

So if managers are asking for help, what can we do? Well, one of the main problems is they don’t have the support they desperately need.

As they navigate increasingly complex roles, managers need solid training to help them become better at coaching others, as well as guidance on how to have difficult conversations with their staff.

One area that’s usually forgotten is that managers need strong managers too so they can model good behaviour and learn from those above them.

If we don’t directly address these issues, managers will continue to crack. It’s sometimes said that “pressure creates diamonds”, but right now, the pressure is building so much in all directions that the only thing it’s creating is a tired and stressed workforce that’s screaming out for our help.

Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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