16 June 2026 
Emma Walton-Pond, Communications Officer
Middle managers play, and have always played, an important role in higher education. But in the current environment, that role has become much more important and, equally, harder to sustain.
Universities are navigating financial pressure, changing student expectations, industrial relations challenges and demands for pace and clarity. Senior leaders are focused on strategy, risk, regulation and sustainability. Staff are looking for honesty, fairness, direction and support.
Between those groups sit heads of department, school leaders, professional services managers and operational leads. They are expected to translate priorities into day-to-day reality. They explain decisions, absorb concerns, manage workload pressures, support teams and keep change moving.
In employee listening, they are frequently the overlooked link. Not because they are missing from the process, but because they are not always given the support and clarity they need to turn staff feedback into meaningful action.
This is where many listening strategies quietly lose credibility. The missing link is often not the survey itself, but the middle layer expected to act on it.
Middle managers are close enough to senior leadership to deliver institutional priorities and transformation programmes. They are also close enough to teams to hear the questions, concerns and practical challenges those decisions create.
That gives them enormous influence. Staff are often more likely to trust and listen to their direct manager than a distant senior leader. Local managers shape how people experience communication, fairness, workload, change and action after a survey.
But influence is not the same as authority.
Many middle managers are accountable for delivering outcomes they did not design, implementing decisions they had limited opportunity to shape and managing concerns they may not have the power to resolve. They are asked to bring people with them, but not always given the context, confidence or decision rights to do it well. That is a structural issue, not an individual failing.
A staff survey does not end when the results are published. In many ways, that is where the harder work begins.
An institution may have strong survey design, good participation and clear priorities. But for most staff, the credibility of employee listening is tested locally: in team meetings, one-to-ones, school conversations, service planning, workload decisions and the small signals that show whether feedback has been taken seriously.
People Insight’s 2025 HE benchmark data shows that only 41% of HE staff believe action will be taken as a result of their survey. That is an improvement from 38% in 2024, but still well below the cross-sector benchmark of 51%.
That gap speaks volumes. Staff may take part in a survey, but if they cannot see what changes afterwards, confidence weakens.
The data also points to the pressure facing local leaders. In the 2025 HE benchmark, 59% of staff said they could comfortably cope with their workload, compared with 63% across all sectors. Work-life balance varies sharply by role group: 50% of academic staff said they were able to strike the right balance between work and home life, compared with 71% of professional services staff.
These are exactly the kinds of issues middle managers are asked to help address. But they are often trying to do so while operating within the same constraints as their teams.
Manager fairness scores are strong, with 86% of academic staff and 88% of professional services staff saying their manager treats them fairly and with respect. The challenge is whether institutions are giving managers enough support, clarity and authority to turn that trust into action.
The middle manager role has expanded quietly over time. Hybrid working, matrix structures, overlapping change programmes, wellbeing concerns and administrative demands have all added weight to the role.
In HE, this is intensified by complexity. Academic and professional services teams often operate with different cultures, rhythms and pressures. Schools, faculties and departments may have significant autonomy.
This matters because staff perceptions of influence are already relatively low. The HE benchmark shows 53% of staff said their opinion is sought on decisions that affect their work. Among academic staff, this fell to 41%, compared with 48% among professional services staff.
Managers, therefore, need more than a dashboard and a deadline for an action plan. They need context, connection to senior leaders, space to understand the results and clear priorities. They also need confidence to have honest conversations and a route for escalating issues beyond local control.
HR and OD teams have a critical role in making employee listening work through the middle of the organisation. In practice, there are four useful ways they can support middle managers.
Prepare managers before results are shared
Managers need to know what will be expected of them, how the process will work and where support will be available. This helps them approach results with confidence rather than feeling handed another task.
Clarify the difference between listening, communicating and committing to actionNot every issue can be solved locally, and managers should not be left feeling personally responsible for every concern raised. But they do need to understand how to acknowledge feedback, explain what happens next and identify where action is possible.
Make insight easier to work withAfter results land, HR and OD can help managers avoid long lists of priorities and focus on the themes that will make the biggest difference. That means helping them understand the story behind the data, not just the scores.
Provide practical support, not extra adminThis might include short briefings before results are shared, simple guidance for running local conversations, clear escalation routes, coaching or peer discussion groups, focused action planning templates and check-ins that track progress without creating unnecessary burden.
The aim is not to turn every manager into an engagement expert, but rather to help them lead better conversations, make sense of local feedback and act where they can.
Supporting middle managers does not mean passing responsibility down the line. Senior leaders still need to explain the rationale for change, define success, clarify priorities and remove blockers when local action is not enough.
There is a temptation in employee listening to focus heavily on senior sponsorship and institution-wide action. Both are important, but if the middle layer is not supported, even the best listening strategy can lose traction.
Middle managers are the people who often make employee voice feel real. They are close enough to understand local context and trusted enough to shape team conversations. They can spot where frustration is building, where priorities are unclear and where action is being blocked.
If universities want employee listening to lead to visible progress, they need to listen to the managers who are expected to carry it. What do they need to interpret results well? Where do they lack authority? What admin is getting in the way?
For HR and OD teams, the message is clear: do not overlook the middle. If middle managers are expected to translate strategy, support teams and turn employee voice into action, they need to be treated as a priority audience in the listening process. Not afterthoughts. Not just action owners.
If you want employee listening to lead to visible action, start by supporting the layer that makes it real. Support the middle well, and employee listening becomes more than a survey process. It becomes a trusted route to clearer decisions, stronger teams and change people can believe in.
