Sean Smith: Back-to-work blues? It’s no surprise given the rise of accidental bosses in Australian workplaces

Accidental bosses are ruining workplaces. They’re the employees promoted into managerial positions because they’re good at their job, popular with management, or simply because they’re a convenient choice. And too many are let loose on a workplace without the people skills to manage their new charges. The employer has failed in their responsibility to actually provide formal management or leadership training, instead leaning back on short “tick-and-flick” online training that trivialises their obligations. The result is often a well-meaning but underprepared new manager out of their depth and struggling to come to grips with the daily reality of managing workers. They could be the ones sounding and acting like they’ve dived into a management 101 guide, or the ones deploying a command-and-control style of leadership built on fear where they are the authority figure with the final say. However, they’re also the ones who can’t communicate their expectations or motivate their people, and many become detested micromanagers or perfectionists in a bid to cope, often holding on to tasks they should be delegating. They can be dangerous. That’s because without the training, they’re less likely to call out and report workplace misbehaviour. Consider Nine Entertainment’s investigation of its TV newsrooms last year. An outside probe found managers lacked the skills to prevent and respond to workplace misconduct. As one anonymous employee included in the report said of their workplace: “We have manager(s) in their 40s now who have learned their behaviour from others who have been in those roles before . . . it’s a learned style of management, and our current managers are continuing to perpetrate it. “And people are not qualified to be in the management positions they are . . . If a plane crashes you can’t just take a passenger and put them in the pilot seat. You need people with the right skills appointed to those management roles.” A landmark study in Britain last year by the Chartered Management Institute — a 78-year-old professional organisation that encourages management development — says the problem with accidental managers goes beyond toxic workplaces. The institute found a staggering 82 per cent of people elevated to management positions in the UK had no formal management or leadership training, with one-third of current managers and leaders still lacking any qualifications in the areas, including 26 per cent of senior bosses. “(Add) longstanding dismissive attitudes towards the skills required to manage successfully and repeated examples of technical competence being valued over behaviours when leaders decide what ‘good’ looks like, and we have a workplace culture rife with ‘accidental managers’,” it concluded. There’s no reason to think things are markedly different in Australia. According to the CMI study, employees who don’t rate their managers are more likely to leave the company, because they’re less likely to like their job, be motivated, or feel valued. Separate research suggests clear links between manager quality and employee health, with bosses having an equal or greater effect on the mental wellbeing and health of their employees than their spouses or doctors. Another UK group in 2023, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, found good management was not rocket science, despite what company boards may think when picking senior bosses. According to the CIPD findings, the best managers were “open, fair and consistent, were adept at handling conflict and managing staff, provided knowledge, clarity and guidance, built relationships and supported professional development”. Providing managers and staff the training they need to make a business successful should be a given. But too many companies and their HR departments fall short on their responsibilities. And the businesses suffer. Before they begin 2025 by banging on again about poor productivity, perhaps Australian companies need to take a deeper look at the underlying causes that they can address, and fix their unhappy or dysfunctional workplaces.