Line management matters - so ease the squeeze

In this episode of our regular Evolve podcast, Professor Sara Connolly of the University of Leicester speaks with Dr Zofia Bajorek - Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Employment Studies - about the importance of line management. Zofia talks about her recently released book on line management and how it was inspired not only by all the projects of her professional working life but also as a tribute to the exemplary line management of her co-author Stephen Bevan, who died in 2024.  

Transcript

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00:00:04:01 

Dr Helen Fitzhugh

Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free, evidence informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research team at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You can find the resources on www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org

00:00:28:09 - 00:00:49:03

Prof Sara Connolly

Hello and welcome to this Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. My name is Sara Connolly and I'm from the College of Business at the University of Leicester and I'm part of the Evolve research team. Today I'm delighted to be talking with Dr Zofia Bajorek. She's Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Employment Studies. Hello, Zofia.

00:00:49:05 - 00:00:50:24

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Hi. Nice to meet you.

00:00:51:01 - 00:01:03:22

Prof Sara Connolly

Nice to meet you, too. So welcome. And, to start off with, I wonder if you could tell us a little about your career journey and your professional interest in workplace wellbeing? 

00:01:04:03 - 00:01:30:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Yeah. Of course. I'd like to say it's been a really smooth journey, but it's been a little bit up and down. So going way back. I did a psychology degree as the basis of what I really enjoy, what I really like finding about. And in my first year, we had a six week course about social identity theory in organizations, and I don't know whether it was the subject matter or whether it was the really enthusiastic lecturer who delivered the course.

00:01:30:10 - 00:01:55:14

Dr Zofia Bajorek

But something about the organizational aspect of work and how people present themselves at work really, really interested me. And so throughout my degree, I had endless conversations with my careers advisor who said, well, clearly this is something you like to do. So then I went on to do an occupational psychology Master's, where I suppose at that time, and that was nearly 20 years ago.

00:01:55:14 - 00:02:19:02

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I did my master's now, where the whole thing about workplace wellbeing was just kicking off. You know, how we look after staff, how wellbeing is really important for productivity. And that really stuck, really stuck with me. I then took two years out of not doing occupational psychology research. I did, I was researching at a legal organization.

00:02:19:04 - 00:02:40:19

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So I was still in research, but not at all related to psychology. But then a PhD appeared looking at temporary staff in hospitals and their implications for patient safety and service quality. And my master's research project was looking at the role of temporary staff and looking at why people undertake temporary employment. So, I thought there's a nice connection there.

00:02:40:19 - 00:03:11:19

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Anyway. So my PhD was supposedly supposed to look at everything from a temporary staff perspective. So talking to temporary employees, you know, what they feel about their work, why they undertake temporary contracts instead of becoming a full time member of the healthcare service. But access to temporary staff was really difficult. So we flipped it and we looked at the management of temporary staff and how temporary staff are managed, and how that has implications for patient safety and service quality.

00:03:11:21 - 00:03:42:02

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So that led to both my interest in how people are managed and how that affects their wellbeing at work. But also this concept of the importance of management in its own right. So both of those led me to, I suppose, where I am now, in looking at both the wellbeing of the working age population, how differing contracts can have an impact on somebody's wellbeing, how they're managed can have an impact on somebody’s wellbeing, how job design, job roles.

00:03:42:02 - 00:03:48:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Your support from your colleagues can also have an impact on your wellbeing. And and within that I’ve started to focus more on wellbeing interventions and evaluating wellbeing interventions at work. Obviously we've had the Covid pandemic and you can't talk about the world of work without mentioning the Covid pandemic, and that's really flipped up and really highlighted the importance once again, of both management and wellbeing. And so this is where I am today. It's a nice space to be in because it's still so very, very important. If you look at the Get Britain working white paper that's come out wellbeing and health and, and the health of employees is central to what the government are thinking about.

00:04:26:19 - 00:05:00:17

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So it's it's really nice and important to be working in this area. So it's been a muddled journey. It hasn't been that nice flow. It's been up and down and it's been a bit messy. But actually, I suppose from that messiness, the real importance and the nuggets of what you want to do do appear. It's led me to be lucky enough to be researching and studying and investigating and talking about two things that I'm really passionate about.

00:05:00:19 - 00:05:18:15

Prof Sara Connolly

Oh, that's fantastic. And I mean, absolutely that importance of management. When I first started working on wellbeing, someone told me that your line manager at work is the most important person in determining your wellbeing. So, absolutely.

00:05:18:17 - 00:05:30:20

Dr Zofia Bajorek

To coined a phrase you join an organization and you leave a bad manager, right? And that sounds so twee, but there's so much evidence supporting that. Hence the book.

00:05:30:22 - 00:05:46:02

Prof Sara Connolly

Okay. So that's that's great because that was going to be my next question. You've done all of these earlier studies which are really focused on contract types. And, and workplace wellbeing. What does the new work focus on in the book? 

00:05:46:04 - 00:06:15:07

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I wouldn't say actually the book is new. Well I would describe it as, as a, it's a compilation. And of all the themes that have been mulling around in the research area, but to get it into one concise document as to this is why line management is important for me, that the book was a labour of love, and it's a labour of love for two reasons one work related, one very personally related.

00:06:15:09 - 00:06:50:05

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So work related. Like I said, this theme about line management has always been something that's been, I suppose, integral to nearly every bit of research I've done, whether it's looking at how, how a health condition is managed at work. So I've, I've looked at a range of conditions for MS from inflammatory bowel disease recently working with cancer and how how people live and are able to to work with chronic health conditions at work evidently comes back to how they're job designed and how they're managed at work, how how Covid was managed.

00:06:50:08 - 00:07:13:23

Dr Zofia Bajorek

A lot of it came back to how a manager was able to keep in touch, communicate, manage the transition between working in an office to working from home, how wellbeing interventions are implemented. Obviously, it comes from an HR perspective about what policies and practices and organizations have, but those are empty shells if they're not managed and implemented correctly by your manager.

00:07:14:03 - 00:07:40:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

How things like sickness, absence return to work. So everything that I seem to be researching or discussing about, there was that nugget of it's not going to work unless the line manager is there doing it correctly, and whether they have the right competencies, the capacity, the resources, the time, the willingness, the motivation to manage. So that was like the professional reason why I really wanted to do this book.

00:07:40:10 - 00:08:05:15

Dr Zofia Bajorek

It was something that I'm passionate about, very clear, very evident now that it's it's really strong and really important. But if you look at a lot of the policy discussions about wellbeing and where things need to go, where resources need to be placed to make changes in an organization, the line manager is very, very rarely talked about. So for me it's a glaring mistake.

00:08:05:15 - 00:08:36:03

Dr Zofia Bajorek

It's a hidden piece in the productivity and wellbeing puzzle that actually hasn't been touched by a lot of people. So that was the professional reason why the book came along. I suppose a more personal reason was I'm one of the coauthors, my wonderful colleague Stephen Bevan was my line manager for a very, very long time. He really was the first person to recruit me, post my PhD, where I suppose I had a bit of a work gap between finishing my PhD and actually getting employment.

00:08:36:05 - 00:09:11:10

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And so he kind of took me under his wing a little bit. I was a bit timid when I joined the workplace because I hadn't been in employment for four years, but for four and a half years, because my PhD was four years, and then I had half a year looking for a job. And so I, I was nurtured by Steve as my line manager to, to help me redevelop my confidence in the world of work, to settle myself down to, to actually understand what aspect of the wellbeing or workplace and HR management and performance management.

00:09:11:10 - 00:09:38:06

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I really wanted to to to land on. He helped me find my feet and we had just signed the contract for writing this book when Steve was given his terminal diagnosis for his cancer. It had returned. And so personally, the book therefore took on a completely different meaning, and it turned out to be where it's now, dedicated to him.

00:09:38:08 - 00:09:45:19

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And it was strange that the title became How to Be the Line Manager You Never Had, because I did have that line manager.

00:09:47:22 - 00:09:57:06

Dr Zofia Bajorek

With writing it, I kind of, you know, I would sum it up as if I could: be more Steve. Right. Because the, 

00:09:57:18 - 00:10:24:07

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Last chapter of the book is how to be the line manager you never had and it gave it gives like a top ten hints and tips as to what organizations and managers can do. And I really did take that both from the evidence of the literature, but also my own personal experience of being managed by somebody like Steve, who really took line management seriously, because fundamentally, he knew it was important.

00:10:24:07 - 00:10:38:15

Dr Zofia Bajorek

You know, he had been a researcher in workforce wellbeing and workforce management for 40 years himself. So he was able, like, bless him, in, in a time of, you know, when you're given a year and a year and a half to live, you just don't think you want to be writing a book.

00:10:39:16 - 00:11:06:00

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Or talking about work anymore. But he did. He read and proofed my chapters when I was having, you know, those writer's blocks. I knew that I could call him and be like, well, let's talk about let's talk it through. So how to be the line manager you never had was both a professional thing to really shout about the importance of this, but it was also a personal dedication for me to Steve. And Cary Cooper

00:11:06:00 - 00:11:28:07

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I should also mention was the third author in this book. As soon as, as soon as Steve’s diagnosis came out, Cary was also like, this has got to be for Steve, but also a little bit about Steve in it. So yeah. So it's a it was a passion and a labour of love for two completely different reasons, but really interconnected reasons as well.

00:11:28:09 - 00:11:58:06

Prof Sara Connolly

You know, Steve, really important figure in, in this field and be more Steve sounds like a great tribute. Yes. Thank you. I wanted to come back to what you were saying about management being the sort of the missing element, because I think this is a really important policy omission, because all of the discussion about productivity seems to revolve around technology, the potential of AI.

00:11:58:08 - 00:12:07:20

Prof Sara Connolly

Whereas I think that the power of people, the workplace, that seems to me to be a really important dimension here.

00:12:07:22 - 00:12:23:11

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Well, completely. I gave a presentation at the end of last year at a work and health summit, and I suppose my, my remit for that presentation was, what's the call to action going to be? And it was a little bit on the back of the Get Britain working paper, and I'm all for what

00:12:25:01 - 00:12:54:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

That paper is about. I'm all for yes, we need to have healthy, happy employees at work. We need to update this good work. We need to we need to, make sure that people have the right skills and knowledge and the youth charter and all of that in work progression. I'm all for that. But if you don't have a manager in place who understands the importance about that or isn't motivated to do that, it's it's really not going to work.

00:12:54:10 - 00:13:07:04

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And it just baffled me. And I did question there were some DWP and Department for Health and Social Care people, and I did question them in the room. You're missing a trick here. You're really missing a trick.

00:13:07:22 - 00:13:26:07

Dr Zofia Bajorek

If the management isn't there, if a manager hasn't got the capability to even understand why health and wellbeing in the workplace is important, then there's a fundamental flaw. And the implementation of any policy or practice regarding health and wellbeing at work will fall at the first hurdle.

00:13:26:09 - 00:13:52:05

Prof Sara Connolly

You know? Absolutely. So a lot of our listeners are going to be people that are working in HR. Or have responsibility for wellbeing strategies within their organizations. So, I wondered if, based on this body of work, if you have any real life examples of how evidence gathered through research can be used to change, and improve practice.

00:13:52:11 - 00:14:24:07

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Even before somebody starts at an organization. Every touchpoint, every human touchpoint that an employee has at an organization, it's vital to how they see the organization. Your line manager is that lens, typically through which an employee, will view an organization. That's where they get a lot of their information from that's, you know, the person who does their appraisal performance, monitors sickness absence and gives you feedback.

00:14:24:09 - 00:14:58:19

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And so for me this is really critical for HR Now HR have devolved a lot of their responsibility to the line manager so that they can concentrate on their policies and practices, etc., etc. but I, I question whether that is right because it actually where's the human in the human resources now? Where's the people in people management if they're too focused on the policies and practices, then that human element gets lost.

00:14:58:21 - 00:15:21:15

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Which goes on to my second chapter about the line manager being, I suppose at the end of HR delivery. And my concern is here, which is why I question the role of HR and line management in this. It's I, I see the line it I term them the squeezed middle. You know, they have HR leadership coming down at them.

00:15:21:15 - 00:15:48:13

Dr Zofia Bajorek

They have their employee coming at them from that end. They've got policies and practices. They've got the external client. And then around that they've got their technical job that they've got to do. And so the line manager doesn't have the time, the resources, the willingness. I use, the AMO model. So the attitude, the motivation and the opportunities - so they don't have those, then they won't be able to manage.

00:15:48:15 - 00:15:52:09

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And if you've got a squeezed manager they might not have the motivation to manage because it's an additional thing on top of their technical job, they won't have the opportunity to do the job effectively because they don't have the organizational resources there to help them. And the ability is an interesting one because a lot of line managers are promoted into line managerial responsibilities. You know, the CMI and I know you've spoken to the CMI about this, that statistic, about 80% of line managers are accidental.

00:16:20:15 - 00:16:48:01

Dr Zofia Bajorek

It's fascinating. And for me it's the trigger point. Right. So we're promoting people into line managerial positions who might not have the technical expertise to do it. They might be excellently, technically brilliant at their job. They might be a great accountant. They might be a great researcher, they might be a great lawyer. Excellent. That's great. And rightly so.

00:16:48:01 - 00:17:11:02

Dr Zofia Bajorek

You should be promoted on your ability and your skills to do your job. I'm not saying that what I'm saying is just because they've been promoted, because of their technical ability and expertise, does that mean they have the empathy, the emotional intelligence, the ability to talk, the ability to have those difficult conversations, the ability to to manage a person.

00:17:11:04 - 00:17:35:05

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And that, for me is where HR needs to come in and actually start thinking about, well, what do we want our line managers to do? What are the key competencies that we want our line managers to have? Where is that responsibility for us to say, well, actually we as HR managers, we as human resources can take back some of this.

00:17:35:09 - 00:17:51:24

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So a line manager can line manager effectively, or we can choose managers to manage effectively. So for me it's a bit of both. A line manager has to be able to also say, actually, I don't think I have the skills or the training to line manage.

00:17:52:18 - 00:18:14:04

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Or I don't want to line manager and that's perfectly okay as well. But HR really have to start thinking about, well, actually, if it is important and all the, all the research in this book says it is important, then how do we do this right. And actually, I do think that that goes back to some of the role of HR here.

00:18:14:04 - 00:18:22:17

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And we've got to get this right. We've got to see it as important. So let's start thinking more significantly about this role.

00:18:22:19 - 00:18:32:20

Prof Sara Connolly

What would you say is the main challenge to organizations to using this learning and how can they be overcome?

00:18:32:22 - 00:19:09:04

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Line management matters. And if they don't see that then that's a that's your huge stumbling block. It's got to run through the core stream of what an organization thinks about, you know, we as employees, we get our messages from line managers. Every human touchpoint, every conversation is really important. If an employee's having a bad day, if an employee's feeling ill or they have their health diagnosis, that first initial conversation with your line manager is pivotal to how that next stage is managed.

00:19:09:04 - 00:19:25:05

Dr Zofia Bajorek

We've just done a piece of research with working with cancer, which was another really important piece of research. Obviously, Steve was an ambassador for working with cancer. So, you know, a lot of a lot of my projects recently have been very, really personal.

00:19:26:12 - 00:19:50:00

Dr Zofia Bajorek

But one of the things that we found there were HR Managers, and we said we didn't survey line managers, but we surveyed HR manager, and one of the main findings there was like, we recognize that line managers are really important in these return to work discussions with with employees who are living with cancer, or we've had a cancer diagnosis and treatment, and now we want to return to work, but we acknowledge that we don't train them to have these conversations.

00:19:50:00 - 00:20:22:22

Dr Zofia Bajorek

We don't coach them. We you know, we don't know what they're doing with their employee when they're coming back to work, which for me is that trigger point, whether it's the, learning and development conversation, whether it's a progression conversation, whether it's that feedback conversation, whether it's a health and wellbeing conversation, whether it's a pay conversation that that thing, that line management matters, and how this conversation is structured, taken, fed back, felt by the person that it's being done to.

00:20:23:03 - 00:20:55:01

Dr Zofia Bajorek

You need to have that. You need to have that - line management matters - because somebody can go away from a line manager conversation feeling really rubbish, if it's done badly, but really buoyed if it's done well. And that's where the impact on the wellbeing has. My caveat to this, and it is a chapter in the book, is very often when people talk about the line manager and they talk about the squeeze middle and they talk about, you know, everything that a line manager has to do.

00:20:55:03 - 00:21:25:09

Dr Zofia Bajorek

What we forget about is that the line, a line manager position is one of the most stressful positions in an organization. It's a really difficult thing. It's a really difficult job to have. You know, when I was writing this book, I think in the introduction, I said, what with all the expectations of, of of a line manager with that, you know, I think I read somewhere that the manager was important, the most important thing to an employee, to their health and their well-being.

00:21:25:11 - 00:21:36:22

Dr Zofia Bajorek

You know, we need managers that balance empathy with accountability. There's an expectation that line managers should be able to inspire employees to achieve greatness, adapt to change.

00:21:37:22 - 00:21:39:18

Dr Zofia Bajorek

You know, with the weight of all these expectations, how are line managers doing their job in in the first place?

00:21:44:23 - 00:22:20:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

How could there ever be a good one? And so for me, the caveat to this is yes, we want line managers to be really good. Yes, we want them to to do really well and to have an understanding of how their actions can have an impact on the wellbeing and productivity of those who they manage. But I suppose my other question to HR, my other really strong take home message would be it's all very well, but if you don't look after the wellbeing of the individual manager themselves as well, then then all of all that good work will be undone.

00:22:20:10 - 00:22:44:13

Dr Zofia Bajorek

There's so much evidence now, and a lot of it came through the pandemic actually about, if managers felt and they themselves were struggling dealing with that transition or dealing with their, their own personal wellbeing and how they were adapting to the change or the anxiety around Covid themselves, a lot of that was rubbing off to their to their people whom they manage.

00:22:44:15 - 00:23:06:13

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And our own research suggested that when managers were more stressed, then their employees felt more stressed. And so in the importance of the wellbeing of the manager is something that HR really needs to take into consideration themselves as well. If manager if line management matters, then the wellbeing of the line manager also matters.

00:23:06:15 - 00:23:29:20

Prof Sara Connolly

Thank you very much. That's a really good, end point, for, for that conversation. So thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us today. Now, you mentioned that your career started at a point where workplace wellbeing, you know, was suddenly, becoming important and has become, you know, a really key topic in, in the field.

00:23:29:22 - 00:23:40:09

Prof Sara Connolly

So I wondered if you had, you know, a sort of a crystal ball. What do you think the pressing workplace wellbeing issues of the next decade will be?

00:23:40:11 - 00:23:42:01

Dr Zofia Bajorek

It's really interesting, isn't there?

00:23:42:21 - 00:24:04:04

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And I think, I think there's a multifactorial response to this. So firstly, the health and wellbeing of the population is changing. We're living longer, but we're not necessarily living more well. So we are going to be working in organizations where people could be living with one, two, maybe three

00:24:04:13 - 00:24:26:09

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Long term health conditions. So that goes back to, well, how how are we managing that? How do we effectively manage people at work with long term health conditions? It's going to be the norm. It's going to happen. Whether it's the rise in cancer incidence rates that are happening. You know, cancer incidence rates are now happening younger as well.

00:24:26:15 - 00:24:53:02

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And although treatment is improving and survival rates are improving, just because somebody has survived from cancer, it doesn't mean they're cancer free. They are starting another part of their cancer journey. Similarly, rates of dementia are increasing and they're starting at a younger time as well. So the workforce is really going to have to start thinking about, right, how do we how do we manage our workforce well?

00:24:53:04 - 00:25:17:11

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And beginning to acknowledge that maybe contracts will have to change. Maybe we will have more part time workers, maybe we will have to do more job crafting. So even though somebody has a long term health condition at work, we still focus on their capability and ability. We focus on their capacity and not their incapacity. And that is a management challenge.

00:25:17:13 - 00:25:43:20

Dr Zofia Bajorek

It's an organizational challenge in how it's how that change, is managed and how how it's done effectively and sensitively. But it's a management challenge about job design, job creation, job capacity and team and how it affects the the team in which somebody works. So the health of the workforce is going to change and the workforce has to adapt to it.

00:25:43:20 - 00:25:58:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And we have to manage that effectively. You know, I've I've started 2025 with a hangover from 2024. I think if you read all of these trends about workforce changes, a lot of them are still focusing on this really annoying return to the

00:25:58:15 - 00:26:26:03

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Office debate. Right. And that's overtaken the extension of flexible work debate. And I think the more hung up we're getting about whether we want people in the in the office or not, it's taking away the attention on all that good work about flexible work, and where flexible work can help people. And I suppose going forward and in the future.

00:26:26:05 - 00:26:59:02

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I would like to see better management of the workplace and work contracts, whether that is workplace flexibility, whether that is, hybrid, whether that's part time, contractual hours, how that affects gender differences, equality and diversity and inclusion, that all falls under this I think. So for me that's a management thing. I don't think for me, the debates about returning to work is about productivity.

00:26:59:04 - 00:27:24:00

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I actually think it's a management thing. We know that flexibility in itself, per se, is good. What I think is missing from conversations is it's being managed really badly. Why do you want people coming back to the office? Because they think productivity is going down. They think people aren't having those conversations. They think that creativity isn't happening. So people have to be in the office to do that.

00:27:24:05 - 00:27:46:21

Dr Zofia Bajorek

No. If it was managed effectively, all those things could still happen. So for me, it's not, it's not a return to office debate per se. It's about how flexible work and hybrid work has been implemented in an organization conversation. But people don't want to go there. They don't want to touch it. But if you go back to line management matters and management matters, that covers that.

00:27:46:23 - 00:28:11:18

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So there's health and wellbeing that's flexible work. Underneath that flexible work. I did bring in the EDI conversations and they are they are being sparked massively now. And that's a management thing because it goes back to how how does somebody feel when they're at work. And I think it's being pursued a lot by the race agenda. I think obviously in in Covid we also have the Black Lives Matter force that came through there.

00:28:11:20 - 00:28:31:15

Dr Zofia Bajorek

But it goes beyond that. It goes to sexuality, it goes to age. Aging is another thing that needs to be managed well. It goes to gender, it goes to religion. It goes to so many things. So there are many, many things that an organization looking forward. And in my crystal ball, I would say health and wellbeing still has to be up there.

00:28:31:17 - 00:28:48:23

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I don't think that's ever going to go away. Actually, I think the focus on it is going to be stronger. If you look at Get Britain working, Health and Wellbeing was there. We know we've got at the moment, was it 2.8 million people economically inactive because they're they're ill and they don't feel like they can return to work?

00:28:48:23 - 00:28:55:09

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Of course they can return to work if the workplace promotes good working practices to get them back into work.

00:28:55:11 - 00:28:56:03

Prof Sara Connolly

Thank you. 

00:28:56:03 - 00:28:57:12

Dr Zofia Bajorek

I don’t know if that’s answered your question?

00:28:57:14 - 00:29:26:13

Prof Sara Connolly

Oh, no, I it really has because I think what you said about flexibility, job design and job crafting are really important. And it also allows me to plug a bit of research that the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing team will be conducting, in in the next three years about interventions in the workplace to try and, assess the evidence on how these can be scaled up.

00:29:26:15 - 00:29:46:17

Prof Sara Connolly

In order to help address the, the challenges that you quite rightly, identify. Well Zofia, it has been really, really, great chatting with you this morning. If the listener takes only one simple message from listening to this podcast, though, obviously there'll be many more. What would you want that to be?

00:29:46:17 - 00:30:07:01

Dr Zofia Bajorek

Line management matters. And the other one which I've used in another conversation is Ease the Squeeze. And that really goes back to your to your HR listeners. If we want line managers to be effective, we do need to ease that squeeze on them. You know, I wrote a paper about why we should be hugging and not squeezing line managers.

00:30:07:05 - 00:30:17:08

Dr Zofia Bajorek

And ironically, that came out just as the Covid pandemic started. So we were we had to social distance, so we weren’t allowed to hug.

00:30:17:10 - 00:30:21:07

Prof Sara Connolly

No hugging!

00:30:21:09 - 00:30:24:22

Dr Zofia Bajorek

No hugging allowed! I think, you know, it's a metaphorical hug. And that that easing the squeeze on line managers so that they can do their job well. 

00:30:28:01 - 00:30:49:02

Dr Zofia Bajorek

So that the line management matters message can be promoted through them, I think are the two takeaway messages that I would really say to HR managers, HR listeners and to line managers yourselves, you know, it's okay to say to your line manager, I need more training in this. Or, you know, actually, I don't want to be a line manager.

00:30:49:04 - 00:31:09:07

Dr Zofia Bajorek

That's okay too. Ease the squeeze on yourself, if you feel like it's just a bit too much for you, look after your line managers. Look after your own wellbeing because you are important. The HR manager's line management matters and ease the squeeze on line managers so that they can do their job properly.

00:31:09:09 - 00:31:22:05

Prof Sara Connolly

Yeah. Thank you so much. Really interesting talking to you and thank you to our listeners, joining this podcast. Thank you. Bye bye.

00:31:22:07 - 00:31:29:11

Dr Helen Fitzhugh

Please do visit. www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org. We look forward to seeing you next time.