Published on: December 3, 2025 at 3:18 pm
In 2026 and beyond, the most successful—and the most sustainable—organizations will be those that have consistently developed and supported their line managers, according to Academy of Management Scholar Carol Kulik of the University of South Australia.
Over the past decade, many organizations have moved hiring and onboarding activities to online platforms, replaced employer-sponsored training with self-directed learning, and outsourced routine tasks to AI agents. In the short term, these organizational choices are efficient and cost-effective, Kulik noted, but over the long run, these choices are reducing opportunities for employees to create and maintain work-based relationships.
“They are damaging employee well-being: Employees are more likely to describe themselves as lonely at work, and to report having no work friends,” Kulik said. “Further, those choices are putting organizations’ long-term performance at risk.
“They make it especially difficult for early-career employees to establish mentoring relationships with their more experienced colleagues,” she said.
“When new hires need to upskill fast—think law, journalism, consulting, and other professions—to transform their academic degrees into on-the-job skills, those mentoring relationships can make-or-break an employee’s career.”
As the social ties among employees fray, an early-career employee’s relationship with their line manager has become the most critical link, Kulik said. When work is digitalized and the workforce dispersed, effective line managers can fill the gaps: introducing employees to new professional contacts, nudging employees toward valuable development opportunities, and role modeling high performance.
“Those managerial behaviors don’t happen automatically, because managers routinely overestimate their people skills,” Kulik said. “And even a motivated manager may not have enough slack in their schedule to nurture early-career employees.”
Ten years ago, the average manager had five or six people reporting directly to them. Today the number of reports is more likely to be 10 or even 20, Kulik noted, and it’s even higher in remote-work environments.
“Most organizations have been ‘delayering’ their structures and eliminating managerial roles,” Kulik said. “I’m predicting that the 2026 ‘winners’ will be those organizations that have maintained their managerial workforces and given them sufficient support to do their jobs well.
“They’re the organizations best positioned to weather future storms and help employees adapt to change,” she said. “Past investments in line managers will pay dividends across the entire business.”
