British businesses are wasting more than £13 billion a year in lost productivity as middle managers spend weeks dealing with avoidable, low-value work, according to new research by YouGov.
The findings — published in the fifth annual Feedback from the Field report by workplace operations platform SafetyCulture — reveal that middle managers lose an average of 7.3 weeks a year to unnecessary or repetitive tasks, including unproductive meetings, email overload, and correcting others’ mistakes.
The cost of that inefficiency is staggering: when managers’ wages are combined with the scale of the UK’s frontline workforce, the total wasted time amounts to £13.2 billion annually, the report estimates.
Of the five sectors surveyed, manufacturing is the hardest hit, with around £4 billion in wasted managers’ time every year. It is followed by retail (£3.3bn), construction (£2.4bn), transport and logistics (£1.9bn), and hospitality (£1.5bn).
Ronan Kirby, SafetyCulture’s Managing Director for EMEA, said the results highlight a chronic underuse of management talent across frontline industries: “Middle managers are the backbone of operational success, yet too often they’re held back by inefficiencies and admin overload. When equipped with the right tools and visibility, they can be the catalysts for real, sustainable improvement.
“The reality is they’re one of the most underused sources of insight in any business. They’re close enough to see where things break down and experienced enough to understand how those issues hit the bottom line.”
The study also exposes a disconnect between middle managers and senior leadership. Nearly nine in ten managers (88%) said they had ideas to improve their organisation, but fewer 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 is done.”
By contrast, where managers’ ideas were adopted, the impact was significant: 57% reported more efficient operations and 46% saw cost reductions.
Kirby said the findings revealed a “two-way gap” between operational insight and executive decision-making.
“Managers’ ideas often struggle to gain traction, and leadership strategies don’t always reflect day-to-day challenges. The opportunity lies in closing that gap with systems and visibility that turn good ideas into lasting improvement.”
The report highlights examples of middle management-led innovation already paying dividends. Mowi Consumer Products UK, which operates the UK’s largest fish processing site with nearly 1,000 employees, cut 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 operator Anna Giusti spearheaded the project, which has since helped digitise operations across the site.
“The company is full of passionate people who invest their time and careers in improving processes, and we’re reaping the benefits of that,” Giusti said. “The digitisation programme has also enabled me to progress in my career to become a business data analyst.”
The report concludes that empowering managers to lead change is the key to improving operational efficiency across the UK’s frontline sectors.
“The most effective organisations empower everyone to contribute to change,” Kirby added. “With the right systems in place, managers can stop fighting the same fires every day and start driving the next opportunity forward.”
