Experts are calling it the Great Flattening — and it's putting a ton of stress on middle management
Yaroslav Kushta/Getty Images
Company management ranks are thinning out and at an expedited speed in 2025.
The data tells the story behind what workplace experts are calling “The Great Flattening.” For starters, U.S. managers are overseeing three times the number of staff they did in 2015, Gartner reported. That number should expand as companies like Google $GOOGL (which recently cut 35% of its small team managers) and Intel $INTC (which slashed 50% of its management positions) continue to cut management headcount.
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Additionally, companies were advertising 42% fewer middle management positions at the 2024 year-end compared to 2022. And Gartner estimates that 20% of U.S. companies will, by the end of 2026, leverage artificial intelligence to “flatten” organizational structures, cutting about 50% of management positions.
That scenario is already having a massive impact on the workplace, especially on the once formidable impact of close relationships between team leaders and team staffers.
What’s the root of the problem? What are overworked managers saying right now, and what does a thinned-out management structure look like one or two years from now?
Here’s a closer look
No doubt, managers are getting stretched out. Unfortunately for the leadership step, not much help is on the way.
“Recent and ongoing layoffs have thinned out management, and that’s left remaining managers struggling,” said Jessica Weiss, a New York City-based workplace culture and corporate leadership consultant. “When Microsoft $MSFT announced layoffs, they said that they would be across all levels, teams, and geographies, but the cuts focused on reducing the number of managers." Weiss points out that Amazon $AMZN CEO Andy Jassy wants to increase the ratio of workers to managers by at least 15% by early 2025. And while companies have cut their workforce by 3.5% over the past three years, management positions dropped by 6.1%.
That doesn’t just spell trouble for management, but also for team members.
“Your manager affects your mental health more than your doctor or therapist and just as much as your spouse,” Weiss said. “When companies stretch managers so thin they can barely keep up with their current team, let alone take on three times more people, they're basically destroying the relationship that most determines whether you're happy, satisfied, and engaged at work.”
Doing so risks seeing valued managers and staffers head for the exit.
“You can't triple someone's responsibilities and expect them to maintain those meaningful connections that make people want to stay,” Weiss noted.
While layoffs have eliminated layers of middle management, leading to fewer managers supporting far more employees, remaining responsibilities haven’t shrunk. If anything, they’ve expanded.
“Managers are now expected to be strategists, coaches, communicators, and morale-keepers, often without the resources to do it all effectively,” said Sabria Sciolaro, chief people officer at Firstup in Kansas City, Mo. “That’s creating a real risk: when the most trusted link between employees and leadership falters, trust, clarity, and engagement go with it.”
One additional cherished workplace tradition is also threatened by thinned-out management ranks.
“Mentorship is at risk,” said Neil Morrison, global chief people officer at Staffbase in Farnham, U.K. “Mentorship requires time, presence, and dialogue, and those are the first things squeezed when managers’ calendars are packed. But this makes employee communications all the more critical.”
Even when one-to-one time is limited, managers who invest in transparent, empathetic communication can still provide guidance and support. “It’s not a replacement for mentorship, but it ensures employees don’t feel left to navigate alone,” Morrison added.
It’s up to major company decision-makers to address managers who are burning the candles on the job, and the sooner the better.
For instance, Sciolaro said her company’s employees view their direct manager as their most trusted source of company updates, which makes taking the pressure off even more urgent. These management strategy tips can be deployed almost right away and with effective results.
For managers who feel like they’re in over their heads, the first step is to look at where time is going. “Often, they’re consumed by relaying updates or chasing acknowledgments instead of leading,” Sciolaro said. “Automating routine communication frees them to spend more time on coaching and problem-solving.”
It’s also important to be clear with teams that AI and digital tools are there to reduce the burden, not to replace the human role. “When organizations use data to confirm employees have received and understood updates, managers are freed from repetitive tasks and can focus on the high-value conversations only humans can have,” Sciolaro added.
Managers should stop trying to be all things to all people.
Selena Rezvani, a corporate leadership expert and author of the book "Quick Leadership: Build Trust, Navigate Change, and Cultivate Unstoppable Teams," said managers should filter out "faux urgency." To do that, she said, they can "heavily vet projects before they say yes, push back on everything being treated as an emergency, use direct language to set priorities, and say 'no' as protection for your team.”
Stressed-out managers should also communicate any hard feelings with company leadership. Just do so in a way that comes across as genuine, using facts and data to support your statements and argument.
“If you just complain, you run the risk of coming across as complaining because you have additional work,” said Jason Leverant, president and chief operating officer at AtWork Group in Knoxville, Tenn. “You’ll also want to think about why the organization is making the changes that they are making. Could it be based on profitability? Could it be based on outputs or efficiency?”
If so, managers should suggest process improvements or some other solutions to help manage the change, rather than simply taking on more of the work. “That type of critical thinking will help position you for success in the future as well,” Leverant said.
The stakes are so high with overworked managers that corporations don’t have as much time as they think to fix the problem.
"If lower head count trends continue, managers will start to resemble portfolio operators, where they lead across stretched, more sprawling teams,” Rezvani said. “One-to-one coaching will most likely become the exception, not the norm. What will help the best managers stand out is that they’ll shift from being overloaded, heroic doers to culture designers who push for something more sustainable.”
The business case for better workplace experiences for overworked managers is also clear.
“More than 80% of people would rather have good mental health than a high salary,” Weiss said. "Two-thirds would take a pay cut for better mental wellness support." She pointed out that an analysis of Fortune 500 companies during the Great Resignation of 2021 found that companies with mentoring programs grew their workforce by a median of 3%, while companies without them shrank by 33%.
The winners will be organizations that get this simple truth: when your manager affects your mental health as much as your family does, workplace happiness isn't a nice-to-have, it's everything. “Companies that can create joy, connection, and support across all life stages, even with fewer managers, will win,” Weiss noted. “Those that don't will watch their best people leave for places that actually care about human happiness at work.”
