British businesses waste more than £13 billion every year in lost productivity as middle managers spend weeks on end doing avoidable, low-value work, according to new research from YouGov.
The findings – published in workplace operations platform SafetyCulture’s fifth annual Feedback from the Field report – show that middle managers lose an average of 7.3 weeks per year to unnecessary or repetitive tasks, including unproductive meetings, email overload and correcting others’ mistakes.
The cost of this inefficiency is staggering: if you add managers’ salaries to the size of Britain’s frontline workforce, the total wasted time amounts to £13.2 billion a year, the report estimates.
Of the five sectors examined, manufacturing is the hardest hit, with around £4 billion of manager time wasted every year. This is followed by retail (£3.3bn), construction (£2.4bn), transport and logistics (£1.9bn) and hospitality (£1.5bn).
Ronan Kirby, EMEA managing director of SafetyCulture, said the findings highlight the chronic under-utilization of management talent across frontline industries: “Middle managers are the backbone of operational success, but all too often they are held back by inefficiencies and administrative overload. When equipped with the right tools and visibility, they can be catalysts for real, sustainable improvement.”
“The reality is that they are one of the most underutilized sources of information in any organization. They are close enough to see where things are failing and experienced enough to understand how those problems impact the bottom line.”
The study also reveals a gap between middle management and senior management. Nearly nine in ten managers (88%) said they have ideas to improve their organization, but less than half (43%) said their ideas were ever implemented.
More than a third (37%) blamed senior leadership for being “unreceptive” to suggestions from below. Many described company-wide improvement initiatives as “tick-box exercises” driven by people “who don’t understand how the work gets done.”
In contrast, when managers’ ideas were adopted, the impact was significant: 57% reported more efficient operations and 46% reported cost reductions.
Kirby said the results showed a “two-way divide” between operational insights and senior management decision-making.
“Managers’ ideas often struggle to gain traction, and leadership strategies don’t always reflect everyday challenges. The opportunity lies in bridging this gap with systems and transparency that turn good ideas into lasting improvements.”
The report highlights examples of middle management-led innovation that is already paying off. Mowi Consumer Products UK, which operates the UK’s largest fish processing site with almost 1,000 employees, has reduced its paper-based records by 90% and more than doubled its product and quality audits after introducing SafetyCulture technology.
Senior quality manager David Bett and then-production employee Anna Giusti led the project, which has since contributed to the digitalization of operations across the site.
“The company is full of passionate people who invest their time and careers in improving processes, and we benefit from that,” Giusti said. “The digitalization program also enabled me to become a business data analyst.”
The report concludes that empowering managers to drive change is key to improving operational efficiency across the UK’s key sectors.
“The most effective organizations empower everyone to contribute to change,” Kirby added. “With the right systems in place, managers can stop fighting the same fires every day and move forward to the next opportunity.”
