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Caught In The Middle - Business Today: July 20, 2003

Middle managers are trapped in managerial no-man's land, between ambitious junior managers and younger-than-young CEOs. P.S: You won't believe how little they earn.

By Moinak Mitra

Ever met a happy middle manager? Well, this writer hasn't. At one level, that's strange. People in middle management purportedly carry out the crucial task of serving as the link between the brains of a company (read: senior management), and its hands and feet (read: junior management). And as R. Sankar, the Country Head of hr consulting firm Mercer points out, middle management offers the ideal launch pad for senior management positions. So, what explains the unhappiness?

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT SALARY SURVEY 2003

Numbers could provide a clue. According to a BT-Omam Consultants survey of middle manager salaries across 100 companies in 17 sectors, the typical senior manager earns 172.2 per cent more than what the typical middle manager does. And, average middle manager salaries, circa 2003, are just around 73 per cent higher than what they were in 1997-98, a CAGR of less than 10 per cent a year.

Then, there's the attitude of companies. "Most companies are focused on retaining people at the senior level," says Ashok Sehgal, the Head of hr at Samsung India. Middle managers, he adds, constitute a "replaceable set". Most middle managers reciprocate this sentiment by just not caring about the big picture. Kiriti Sen, the Vice President in charge of hr at Grasim's Textiles division, discovered that when he introduced his managers to the concept of variable pay. Senior managers embraced the idea of performance-linked-variable-pay easily; middle-managers just didn't get it. "Psychologically, middle managers just don't seem to be able to see the link (their performance has) with the organization's profitability." Adds Azfar Hasib, the hr Manager at Churchill India, a subsidiary of the UK insurance major, "The role of the middle manager has been reduced to that of a facilitator-picking up broader specs from the top and communicating them to junior management, with no perceptible value addition."

In effect, the family of middle managers is constituted by star junior managers just passing through on their way to senior management (some actually manage to bypass this level), past-their-prime tree huggers who have probably come to terms with the fact that not everyone can be a senior manager, and the eternal hopefuls who are confident of making the elusive leap, whether in their present companies or elsewhere.

Manish Kumar, a HR manager at ICICI Bank, belongs to the first category. "The bank is growing and when I link this to my individual competency, I have little doubt that I can break into senior management in a short time." That's where, he adds, the future lies, not in the tactical role he performs.

Expectedly, middle manager salaries have stagnated, although the trend isn't visible across sectors, with fast-growth ones such as telecom, it services, insurance, and private banking actually bucking it. "These are nascent industries that are growing rapidly," explains Atul Vohra, a Partner at search firm Heidrick & Struggles, "and there are more opportunities for middle managers to grow if they perform." Still, these sectors, and a few others like auto and steel are, at best, exceptions. Elsewhere, "pay and promotions (in the middle level) have stagnated over the past three-to-four-years," says Shailesh Shah, the CEO of hr consulting firm Watson Wyatt.

Flatter organizations and younger chief executives (some people actually make senior management by their early 30s) haven't helped the cause of middle managers. Today, as Purvi Sheth of executive search firm Shilputsi puts it, middle management is a heterogenous group, "which has had to accommodate all sorts of people from those with six years' experience to those with 13." And with the emergence of a new aggressive generation of junior managers willing and able to understand a company's strategy, middle managers find their very utility under threat.

If things continue in the same vein-and middle management salaries continue to stagnate-companies could do worse than do away with the level altogether. Middles, as must be evident to anyone in today's fitness-conscious world, are horribly out of fashion.