To think in many roles the higher up the ladder the less stressful the job can be?

[user34632]

I know this won't be true in a lot of jobs. I also know the higher up you are the higher your responsibility. But in terms of day to day stress and workload unless the team/people your responsible for really messes up.
This seems to be the case for many of the companies I have work for and DH also agreed it's the same with him. DH is now in management for a call centre and he says his job is far easier than when he worked in the centre on the phones. It was literally pressure to hit targets constantly, taking back to back calls, managers down your neck. Now he is in management he obviously gets pressure from higher up to hit the targets but he just passes that on. His days just consists of performance reviews, rotas, admin etc.

I work in a admin role where the workload is ridiculous. We are constantly get more work and always behind. Management here are just in constant meetings of which we sometimes attend. They often just seem like chats were it's agreed what work needs to be done and how me and other admin colleagues will do it.

Different type of stress and volume pressures. I have to deliver less than I did when I was junior 10 years ago, but what I have to deliver has to be right first time and on point.

I think the stresses are different - you do have more flexibility about things like leaving early, but being responsible for people's livelihoods and careers - going through a round of redundancies as a manager can be massively stressful.

YANBU. Look at how many people, who say they’re on six figure salaries, sit on mumsnet all day 🙄😂

Some excellent posts from PPs.

I remember when we discovered a compliance mistake made by someone. It was made by somone 4 levels lower than my director but it was my director who would go to prison if we didn't sort it out asap.

And a good manager never passes the pressure down from above. A good manager acts as a buffer and protector.

I read This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. He used to complain about his higher-ups and implied that all they did was swan about and then knock off early to play golf. Then he got promoted on an acting-up basis. Couldn't hack it and left the HNS due to the stress. Turns out that it wasn't that easy after all; it was just that those who could do it made light work of it.

I would say the workload increases but in a less defined way. At a lower level you can have a lot of work to do but it will tend to be specific tasks so it is obvious to everyone else in the team how much there is to do.

At a more senior level your role is usually more vague, with a lot of your work being based on improving things or developing new ways of working. From the outside it would be easy to think 'what do they do?' as the timelines for producing an end result are much longer and the end result less defined. This is in addition to managing a team and all that entails.

Having recently moved into a management role I think that the stress and workload is more in most senior jobs but it is difficult to understand why until you are doing it.

It's a completely different kind of stress.
Whilst I can delegate to people the nature of my role only allows me to delegate tasks but not responsibility (as per legal and regulatory requirements) so if one of them cocks up then i'm the fucker in the firing line from my own management and a regulatory body on top to boot. I could end up in prison for someone else's error.

Whilst I do less of the day to day manual output, I'm a decision maker and have targets to meet as well as the task of managing people and the development of skills within my team, which is ever changing due to the nature of the industry.

So whilst it's less stress in the sense that I'm not shuffling workload to meet demand, I'm juggling a lot of balls at once, and dropping one could result in catastrophic personal and professional consequences.

Don't get me wrong, I adore my job and the pressures but I often dream of the day when I can semi-retire and become a trolly collector at Sainsbury's.

I'm now responsible for people's lives as in financially. It's a whole lot more fucking stressful. If the business goes tits up I have to make people redundant. I'm thinking of going back a stage and chilling out a bit.

I think there is the accountability aspect. So you may not be responsible for completing tasks, but you are now accountable for other teams actions completing those tasks.

You also get to have a lot more control over your day, which is a bonus as you know what works.

I always think sometimes middle management is the worst place to be as you manage people so are accountable for their actions but in the same breath are not senior enough to implement better ways of working and processes to resolve issues.

Once you get above that level the stresses are still there, the hands on work load may change, but the stresses are there, they have just changed.

My work load has lessened but my responsibility and level of accountability is much higher. Overall I'm less stressed though.

DH is more stressed, and his workload has increased, but his job is much more flexible when not in a run period.

I don't think there is less stress however I do think that there more autonomy as you get more senior. This can lead to it being less stressful trying to juggle work and home life because eg you don't have to ask your boss if it is okay to do x on Thursday afternoon, you just block a few hours out in your diary on Thursday afternoon and do x (and then get the work done at some other point).