How to Be the Line Manager You Never Had: Managing People, Performance, & Wellbeing in a Hybrid World

Great line managers are decisive, clear, inclusive, compassionate and fair, but there are too few of them around just when we need them most. They can make or break an organisation and energise or destroy the relationship it has with its employees. At the same time, companies invest too little effort in ensuring that line managers have the skills, personality, emotional intelligence, compassion and know-how to excel.

This book will help make sure that you’ll shine at the most important and influential management jobs you will ever have. It offers practical but evidence-based guidance on becoming an excellent line manager in a world of work that is more diverse, more hybrid and remote, more precarious, more stressful, more digitised and more demanding.

Drawing on the author’s own research and practical experience, together with best-practice case studies from contemporary organisations and interviews with innovators in the field, this book sets out a vision and a pathway for those who want to raise the standard of line management in modern organisations.

Zofia Bajorek is a Senior Research Fellow at IES, UK. Her main interests include the role of line managers and the development of the employment relationship, the management of the psychological contract, the temporary and flexible workforce, and the health and wellbeing of the workforce, including the promotion of good work practices.

Stephen Bevan has almost 40 years of experience in the field of HR research, with specialist expertise in workforce wellbeing, performance and productivity. At both IES and in his previous role at Director of Research at The Work Foundation, he has led a large number of projects for public and private sector organisations both in the UK and internationally and has advised governments on policy issues in several EU member states.

Cary L. Cooper is the 50th Professor of Organizational Psychology & Health at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the immediate past President of the CIPD, President of the Institute of Welfare, Founding President of the British Academy of Management, and former Chair of the Sunningdale Institute in the Cabinet Office/National School of Government. He also served as Chair of the Global Agenda Council on chronic diseases and mental health of the World Economic Forum and was the lead scientist on the UK Government’s Foresight programme on Mental Capital and Wellbeing. He is also the co-author of Well-being, 2nd edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).