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We have gotten good at measuring employee burnout. We track sick days, turnover, engagement scores, and productivity metrics. What we have almost entirely ignored is the distinct, accumulating mental load carried by the people in the middle: your managers.

Managing people is not just a set of tasks added to someone’s job description. It is a permanent cognitive state. A manager is simultaneously holding the performance concerns of their team, the strategic priorities of the business, the personal circumstances of individual staff members, the compliance obligations of the role, the interpersonal tensions in the team — and still expected to deliver their own output.

 

Why is it getting worse 

The manager’s mental load has increased substantially over the last five years. Remote and hybrid work created new visibility challenges — managers are now expected to “check in” more deliberately rather than picking up cues naturally. Psychosocial safety legislation has extended duty-of-care responsibilities into mental health territory that many managers feel entirely unprepared for. And a broader cultural shift has made employees more willing to raise complex personal and professional challenges with their direct reports — which is genuinely a positive thing, but requires managers to have skills and emotional bandwidth that many were never given.

A 2024 Gallup survey found that managers globally report significantly higher stress levels than individual contributors — and that nearly half are actively considering leaving the workforce or stepping back from management roles. Australian data mirrors this trend.

The cost to business is enormous, and almost entirely invisible in standard HR metrics.

 

What Leaders can do 

Three practical interventions:

1. Map the invisible tasks.

Sit with your managers and ask them to list everything they are responsible for that nobody ever measures. You will be surprised — and it will shift how you think about their workloads and their capacity to take on more.

2. Create structured support.

A manager check-in is not the same as a performance review. Regular, confidential conversations with managers about how they are coping — separate from their team’s performance — signals that the business takes their wellbeing seriously.

3. Invest in manager development.

Most people are promoted into management because they were good at the job below them. They are rarely given the skills to manage — to hold difficult conversations, to set boundaries on their own time, to delegate effectively. That gap costs everyone.

The health of your team is largely a function of the health of the manager leading it. That is not a personal responsibility — it is an organisational one.

Ready to get ahead of this? Book your free 30-minute consultation at Blue Kite HR Consulting