‘Conscious unbossing’? At last – a Gen Z buzzphrase we can all get onboard with

They say every day is a learning experience, and today’s lesson requires getting familiar with a new addition to the vernacular: “conscious unbossing”.

The term sounds suspiciously Orwellian, or like something Gwyneth Paltrow may have coined. But it actually refers to a growing cohort of young people in the workplace who refuse to climb the management ladder, seemingly content to shun promotion.

In the glossary of trendy new workplace terms, you’ll find “conscious unbossing” filed alongside “quiet quitting” (when an employee leaves a job emotionally before physically informing their employer they’re on the way out), “bare-minimum Mondays” (doing the least amount required, in a bid to restore one’s work/life balance) and “resenteeism” (when employees actively dislike their job, but stay in it anyway).

Conscious unbossing is, naturally, a young professionals’ thing. According to a new survey, some 52 per cent of Generation Z-ers admit to not wanting to advance into management roles.

At this, many of you are no doubt shaking your heads and bemoaning “kids today”, who spent too much of their formative years in front of a screen, and so on.

But when you hear their reasoning for this departure, it actually makes a lot of sense. They believe promotion to be a byword for hassle, as the new roles with greater responsibility wouldn’t pay sufficiently to make up for the levels of stress involved. The only promotion they’re interested in involves putting self-care before an increase in salary.

Make no mistake: the desire to “unboss” has been around for years – perhaps since we started organising ourselves in big institutions. It has simply become more prevalent in a post-Covid, digital age.

I have been a middle manager, and never much liked it. Longer hours, heat from both above and below (I was never sure which was worse) and the expectation to be “present” in the office. I also have umpteen friends who’ve made the same complaints of management; some have even burned out, horribly.

As David D’Souza, director of profession at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, has previously said: “Research has shown that middle management have been the group most likely to say their workload is unmanageable, and that their work is impacting their mental wellbeing. Their roles often combine significant accountability for both the performance of others and their wellbeing, without the high agency and rewards of more senior roles or the relative lack of accountability of more junior roles.”

Perhaps we should be grateful to Gen Z for coining a phrase for what had been a nebulous thing that has long dogged the workforce, whether the workforce was conscious of it or not.

Faced with a recruitment crisis, companies are in listening mode. Ridding businesses of unnecessary management layers will not only save cash, it empowers staff, offering workers greater decision-making power and flexibility. This in turn removes roadblocks that hamper innovation, improving access to top bosses who can spot and capitalise on good ideas that might otherwise get lost on their way up the chain.

That’s not to say that conscious unbossing is all positive; there may be downsides, too. It will no doubt pave the way for disorganised and chaotic workforces, with key tasks falling along the wayside. Ambitious staff may also be left frustrated by a lack of opportunites for advancement.

Smarter employers are adapting. Headhunting firm Robert Walters, for example, offers a route to advancement for its recruiters – and now back-office employees too – who don’t want to manage people. Rather than progressing from senior consultant to manager, they can instead become a principal then a senior principal, and then a business director – none of which involve line-manager duties. This makes sense. Its recruiters are the people who make the money.

I vividly remember speaking to an insurance exec who bemoaned the fact that his top sales people inevitably got kicked upstairs into management roles they weren’t always well suited to, to the detriment of the business. Allowing them to advance while still doing what they do best would seem to be the business-savvy approach.

Tucked away in the conscious unbossing survey was a ray of hope for UK plc: that more than a third (36 per cent) of respondents are resigned to having to take on a management job “at some point in their career”.

They may not currently feel that the improved salaries available properly compensate for the extra stress. But with UK house prices where they are, borrowing much more expensive and children positively ruinous to a household budget, they may change their minds down the line.

It’s a dirty job – but someone’s got to do it.