There's a leadership crisis unfolding, and it's hiding in plain sight. Only 9% of employees now express interest in management roles, according to recent workplace studies. Meanwhile, over half of all countries (110 of 204) are below population replacement level, rising to 76% by 2050 (Healthdata.org, 2024).
Two seemingly unrelated trends. Same root cause.
Both reflect a fundamental shift from collective responsibility to individual survival. When you're barely managing your own life, taking care of others—whether as a parent or a manager—feels like a burden, not fulfillment.
The Pattern We're Missing
The parallel is striking. Just as young adults are delaying or forgoing parenthood, employees are turning away from management positions. The reasons aren't mysterious—they're rational responses to broken systems.
Consider the incentives. The average salary increase for becoming a manager is just 11%, while stress increases 71% of the time. Why would anyone accept that trade-off?
Similarly, housing costs have made parenthood prohibitively expensive. Research by Dettling and Kearney (2012) found that a 10% increase in home prices leads to a 1% decrease in births among non-homeowners. In Hong Kong, 65% of fertility decline since 1971 is attributable to house prices alone (Li, 2024).
What Hasn't Worked
Governments and organizations have tried to reverse these trends with predictable failures:
Direct Cash Incentives Russia's $7,000 baby bonus, Hungary's $30,000 forgiven loan, Singapore's $8,500 per child—all failed. Singapore still sits below 1.0 fertility despite being "way more generous than all Asian countries."
Social Campaigns Copenhagen's "Have you counted your eggs?" and Singapore's Mentos rap video did nothing. You can't advertise people into life commitments.
Generous Welfare States Norway's 12+ months paid leave and universal childcare didn't stop fertility dropping from 1.98 (2009) to 1.44 (2024). Researchers' conclusion: these policies "have at best only a small effect on fertility outcomes" (Olivetti & Petrongolo, 2017).
The same pattern holds for management. Organizations offer leadership training, mentorship programs, and fancy titles. But they haven't addressed the fundamental problem: the role isn't sustainable.
What Shows Promise
The interventions that work share a common thread—they address structural barriers, not individual motivation.
Housing Access Brazil's housing lotteries increased fertility 32% for young adults who won early homeownership (van Doornik et al., 2025). The research is clear: stable housing enables family formation.
Trust and Security During COVID, most countries saw birth rate dips, but Finland and Norway saw jumps. Finland's strong government trust helped people feel secure in growing families.
Workplace Redesign At Happily.ai, we've seen similar patterns. Organizations that redesign management roles—providing real support, protected time, and meaningful autonomy—see dramatic improvements in both manager well-being and team performance.
The Real Problem: Broken Value Propositions
Being a manager has to be an attractive proposition. The financial incentives clearly aren't enough. According to Gallup (2024), only 31% of managers feel engaged at work, and that number has been decreasing since 2020.
Managers need updated benefits:
- More autonomy: Real decision-making authority, not just responsibility
- Genuine support: Data-driven insights that help them understand and support their teams
- Protected time: Recognition that people management is actual work, not something squeezed between meetings
Like housing for parents, managers need the conditions that make the role sustainable. Our research shows that organizations with exceptional managers (top 10%) achieve teams that are twice as engaged, four times more likely to advocate for their workplace, and report notably higher well-being scores—even within the same organization with identical compensation and benefits.
The Deeper Issue: Values and Survival
The argument for parenthood has centered around fulfillment. But biologically, parenthood was always about survival, not fulfillment. So when we sell it on fulfillment alone, it doesn't work for everyone.
The same applies to management. Some find fulfillment in leading teams, but many don't. Those who take the role anyway often become the managers nobody wants.
We also need stronger examples of leaders for people to aspire to. If leaders are seen to be struggling, insensitive, and unreasonable, why would anyone aspire to that? As employee engagement hits a 10-year low of just 31% (Gallup, 2025), the crisis compounds.
What Organizations Can Do Now
The solution isn't more training or higher pay alone. It requires redesigning how we think about management:
1. Make the Role Sustainable
Organizations need to protect managers from burnout. This means:
- Reducing span of control to enable genuine attention to team needs
- Providing real-time data on team health and sentiment
- Creating systems that make good management the path of least resistance
2. Provide Meaningful Support
Great managers aren't born—they're supported. This means:
- Continuous feedback systems rather than annual reviews
- Tools that help managers spot problems before they escalate
- Recognition for the invisible work of preventing issues, not just solving them
3. Reward the Right Behaviors
Measure what matters. Track:
- How managers develop their teams
- The quality of conversations, not just their frequency
- Impact on team well-being and engagement, not just output
The Urgent Truth
Just as declining birth rates threaten social welfare systems and economic growth (Bloom et al., 2024), the management crisis threatens organizational sustainability.
When managers are overwhelmed and unsupported, employee engagement suffers. When engagement drops, performance follows. The cycle accelerates until organizations find themselves unable to execute strategy, retain talent, or adapt to change.
Until we redesign both parenthood and management to actually work for the people we're asking to assume these roles, expect opt-out rates to keep rising.
The future of work—and civilization—depends on making collective responsibility feel like opportunity, not burden.
References
Bloom, D. E., Kuhn, M., & Prettner, K. (2024a). Fertility in high-income countries: trends, patterns, determinants, and consequences. Annual Review of Economics, 16, 159-184.
Bloom, D. E., Kuhn, M., & Prettner, K. (2024b). Confronting low fertility rates and population decline. VoxEU.org.
Dettling, L., & Kearney, M. S. (2012). House prices and birth rates: The impact of the real estate market on the decision to have a baby. NBER Working Paper No. 17485.
Gallup. (2024). State of the Global Workplace Report.
Gallup. (2025). U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-Year Low.
Healthdata.org. (2024). Global fertility projections and population replacement levels.
Li, W. (2024). Do surging house prices discourage fertility? Global evidence, 1870–2012. ScienceDirect.
Olivetti, C., & Petrongolo, B. (2017). The economic consequences of family policies: Lessons from a century of legislation in high-income countries. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(1), 205-230.
van Doornik, B., Chiapa, C., Prina, S., & Parker, J. (2025). Housing and fertility. CEPR VoxEU.
Ready to transform how your organization supports managers and builds a thriving culture? Discover how Happily.ai uses behavioral science and real-time data to create workplaces where leadership is sustainable and fulfilling.
