Can you be line managed by someone on a lower grade

[teacherspet]

Just that really. If anybody could advise I would be grateful.

I am line managed by someone of a lower grade. My annual leave, sickness etc all go through her. For professional matters I have a clinical lead who I think of as my actual “boss” as he is is the person who gives me advice and allocates my work.
I work as a pharmacist within the NHS and my line manager is a pharmacy technician so we are within the same department which she is in charge of. My “boss” is a higher graded pharmacist. The new structure was a reflection of how much time was taken up by routine admin work and what could be done (probably more effectively!) by someone in a different role.

Yes another scenario is a technical specialist on a high grade could be managed by a generic team leader on a lower grade.

Yep, we have cases where sometimes highly specialist engineers are reporting to people managers who are of a lower grade.
Its really different skillsets, so its not a relection of the manager being more qualified or "better" than the engineer - they're both just doing very different roles

Ok thanks for this, what about in an admin situation when I am pa to the director and an office manager is employed.?

@teacherspet that doesn't sound unreasonable in theory - I could see the office manager having overall responsibility for scheduling the admin staff or centralising the work or something like that

Now if the office manager is a college grad with no previous experience, and you' re normally reporting to someone else entirely that could be a problem - or if you feel the office manager should be reporting to you!

The thing to keep in mind is that people management is a different job than say actually doing the job of a PA (for example)... so you could be the world's best, most experienced PA, but not be suited - or enjoy--managing someone

Line Management can be nuanced.

For example, I presume as PA to your Director, said Director is your Delivery Manager, the person to whom you deliver outputs they need and gives your priorities they need you to attend to.

However, you could reasonable assume a Director may not want to directly attend to administrative tasks associated with record keeping (annual leave, special leave and sickness absence for example) so may choose to delegate that to the Office Manager.

The key thing is who you might reasonably expect to do your performance appraisals. It would not be reasonable or fair for the Office Manager to evaluate your performance and have significant influence on your remuneration package if the majority of your outputs and interactions are with your Director.

The Director doesn't want the line management hassle but will be viewed as your boss. Effectively the line manager did the admin and gives the bad news!

I line manage a PA to Directors and no-one pays me any attention as regard the PA.

Is a PA actually more senior than an office manager?

Thank you people, sounds like it's a possibility then. I would say that, in my case a pa is senior to an office manager as I am on a higher grade, which must surely mean something.

What aspects of your work does this person manage? Is it your performance, or admin things such as leave, sickness recording etc. The former would be unusual, the latter very common.

Presume your performance appraisals will be with the Director? Then it’s absolutely fine that the HR tasks are managed by an Office Manager. I would have that point clarified.

I have no problem with admin duties being managed by an office manager but I dont want to be performance managed by somebody who will have no knowledge of what I achieve on a day to day basis. The job is a new one so just asking theoretically at the moment. Thanks for your responses.

We recently had a departmental reorg and one person who ought to have been in one team isn't, because he is a higher grade than the team manager. However, we have a management track and a technical track so in theory it is possible. They introduced the technical track because in the past (though it still happens,) people could go so far and then had to go on to management to progress further, whether or not they were interested in management or any good at it.