A higher salary and title may no longer be enough to fill a management position. In a survey of more than 13,000 workers, 58 percent of respondents said they would turn down a promotion tied to the expectation of responding outside working hours. For companies, this is a succession problem: if a leadership role automatically means permanent availability, some potential managers lose interest in it.
Companies can struggle to build a new generation of leaders even when they offer higher pay and more interesting responsibility. The obstacle becomes the way managerial work itself is designed.
A survey of 13,742 working people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Europe found that 58 percent of respondents would reject a promotion if the new role meant having to respond to work messages outside normal working hours. For 61 percent, the biggest disadvantage of promotion was the idea that work never really ends.
The important point is that this is not only about the amount of work. Employees distinguish between greater responsibility and unlimited availability. A company can expand a manager’s scope of work without automatically expecting an answer in the evening or on weekends. If it combines the two, it changes the economics of the entire promotion offer: higher pay must compensate not only for more demanding work but also for losing the ability to end the working day.
Another problem is unwritten rules. According to the survey, 64 percent of respondents said that promotions come with expectations the company never explicitly describes in advance, such as answering emails in the evening or being available on weekends. Colleagues’ experience acts as an informal information channel: 53 percent of respondents had seen colleagues become noticeably less satisfied after moving into management. Among people aged 18 to 34, 68 percent reported little interest in managing people if it meant giving up their boundaries between work and personal time.
For company leadership, this is not a question of employee comfort but of how managerial roles are designed. If you have difficulty attracting people into first-line management, examine their real working regime before changing the compensation system. How many evening messages do they receive? Which situations genuinely require an immediate response? Who covers for the manager during time off?
A practical solution can be an explicit agreement about availability. Before accepting the role, a manager should know whether there is an on-call regime, which types of events activate it and who will cover for them. The difference between “we may contact you exceptionally during an operational incident” and “a manager is always available” is fundamental.
A company that fails to clarify this boundary may unintentionally select future leaders not according to their ability to manage people, but according to their willingness to accept unlimited work availability.
KEY TERMS
- Right to disconnect: The principle that an employee does not have to monitor and handle routine work communication outside working hours.
- Unwritten expectations: Rules of workplace behavior that are not part of the formal role description but are effectively required by the team.
- Management succession pool: The group of employees from which a company can select future leaders.
- Manager availability: Predefined situations and times in which a manager is expected to respond to work matters.