Manager Burnout Survey: How Founders Can Keep Good Managers
A new survey of 500 managers finds most like the job and a quarter still think about quitting. Here is what founders can change before their best people leave.
In this article 9 sections
Most managers like managing people, yet many are close to leaving because of workload and stress. Founders can keep them by cutting low-value work, training managers for hard conversations, and showing healthy habits from the top. Fix conditions first, because the job itself is not the problem.
A Ciphr survey of 500 UK managers, reported by HRreview on October 21, 2026, found that 85% like being a people manager. Yet 25% said they think about leaving all or most of the time because of the stress of managing people.
This guide is for founders and executives at growing companies who depend on a thin layer of managers. It covers what the survey shows, why managers burn out, and a practical plan. Upstart Wire writes about how growing companies keep people and process from breaking, and manager strain is one of the first things to give.
What the survey found
Ciphr is an HR software provider, so read the findings with that in mind. The sample was 500 UK managers with people responsibilities, and the results are self-reported. They are directional, not a measure of actual turnover.
The headline number is a contrast. Eighty-five percent like being a people manager, and 84% like or love their work. Eighty percent feel confident managing their teams most of the time. Still, 31% said their workload is unmanageable all or most of the time, and 31% intend to leave within 12 months.
The pressure shows up in time. Sixty percent worked evenings or weekends in the prior six months. Forty percent kept working through illness. One in three said work had hurt their health or wellbeing.
Age matters too. Burnout in the past year was reported by 74% of managers aged 25 to 34, 64% of those aged 35 to 44, 57% of those aged 45 to 54 and 45% of those 55 and over. Younger managers are newer to the role, and they often have less support.
A separate 2026 survey by the Simon Sinek Optimism Company, described by vendor Moody At Work, reports that 75% of 971 middle managers feel extreme burnout and disconnection. That page promotes the vendor's own services and shares no method, so use it only as a second data point.
Why are good managers burning out?
Good managers burn out because they carry people work on top of a full job, with fewer resources than before. Ciphr's chief people and operations officer, Claire Hawes, said managers are often asked to achieve more with less budget and fewer resources. The role keeps growing while the support stays the same.
The survey lists the hardest parts of management. Difficult conversations with employees came first at 32%, followed by increased stress at 30%. Grievances, disciplinary procedures and redundancies troubled 25%, and managing problematic behavior troubled 24%.
Those tasks share a feature. They are emotionally heavy, and they rarely come with training. A new manager gets a team and a title, then faces a hard conversation with no script.
Our guide to building a leadership team when you have never managed managers covers the first-year gaps founders tend to miss. Many of them show up here as burnout.
There is another cause that surveys rarely measure. Managers often split their time between managing and doing individual work. When the doing work does not shrink as the team grows, something has to give, and it is usually evenings.
Step 1: Audit manager workload
Start with facts. Ask each manager to list where their last two weeks went, in rough hours, across four buckets: managing people, doing individual work, meetings and admin. Compare the lists and look for patterns.
Then remove work. The survey shows what managers would change. Less bureaucracy and fewer slow procedures topped the list at 24%. Higher pay followed at 22%, and manager training and better senior support each drew 20%.
Fewer or shorter meetings drew 19%, and more realistic targets 19%. Less admin work drew 18%. Notably, managers preferred reducing their own workload over reducing their direct reports, by 14% to 5%.
That last result is useful. Many founders respond to overload by cutting a manager's team size. Managers are asking for less admin and fewer approvals instead. Check which one your managers need before you reorganize.
If your company has too many layers, you may be adding admin without adding value. Our report on HubSpot's flatter organization and how to remove management layers explains how to do it without breaking things.
Step 2: Train managers for the hard conversations
Hard conversations are the heaviest part of the job, and they can be taught. A simple training plan beats a long program. Build it around the specific moments managers dread.
- Give each manager a short script for feedback, performance concerns and bad news.
- Run practice sessions where managers rehearse with a peer or a senior leader.
- Create a clear path for escalating grievances and disciplinary cases to HR or a founder.
- Debrief after each hard conversation, so the manager does not carry it alone.
Upstart Wire's editors have written scripts for the five conversations first-time managers dread most, in our guide to hard conversations. Use it as a starting point and adapt it to your culture.
Make policy easy to find too. The survey's recommendations include making policies and HR advice easier to access. A manager who can find the rule in two minutes will avoid hours of worry.
Step 3: Model the habits you want
People copy what leaders do, not what policies say. If founders send messages at midnight and skip vacations, managers will assume that is the standard. The survey's advice for senior leaders is to take annual leave, avoid unnecessary out-of-hours work and stay home when ill.
Put that into practice with a few simple rules:
- Schedule messages to send during working hours, even if you write them at night.
- Take a visible vacation and stay unreachable except for real emergencies.
- Ask managers about their workload in every one-on-one, and act on what you hear.
- Cap after-hours expectations in writing, so nobody has to guess.
Pressure to respond immediately was named by 17% of managers as something they would change. A written norm for response times takes that pressure off.
Step 4: Measure what matters
Track a few simple signals. A short monthly pulse check can ask managers whether their workload is manageable and whether they get the support they need. Keep it anonymous, and share the results with the team.
Add exit intent and after-hours work hours to your people dashboard. These two lines will warn you earlier than an engagement score. Review them every quarter, and tie one leadership goal to improving them.
Do not over-read any outside survey. Ciphr's data comes from UK managers and shows reported intentions. Your own people may look different. Their answers are the ones that count.
What if you have no budget for any of this?
Most of the fixes cost time, not money. Pay was the second most common wish in the survey at 22%, but the top item was less bureaucracy at 24%. Cutting a recurring meeting, merging two reports or dropping an approval step is free.
Try a simple stop list. Ask every manager to name one recurring task they would stop tomorrow if they could. Collect the answers, pick the three most common, and remove them for a quarter. If nothing breaks, the stop becomes permanent.
Small companies can also share the load. Two managers can swap difficult cases so that neither handles every grievance alone. A founder can sit in on the first few disciplinary conversations, then step back once the manager has the pattern.
A fair counterpoint on the data
It is easy to over-read a single survey. These are self-reported intentions from a vendor-run poll of UK managers, and intending to leave is not the same as leaving. Some people who say they might quit stay for years.
Even so, the warning signs are specific and fixable. Long hours, unmanageable workloads and little training predict trouble in almost any company. You do not need a perfect study to justify a workload review. You need one honest conversation with each manager.
Conclusion
The survey offers a hopeful message. Managers still like the work, and most feel confident leading. What wears them down is workload, thin resources and the weight of hard conversations. Those are conditions founders can change.
Start with a two-week workload audit and one training session on difficult conversations. Then change one habit at the top. Small, visible fixes tell managers that the company sees the problem, and they cost far less than replacing a good manager who quietly gave up.
