In the UK, almost one in ten employees (9.7% of the total) is a manager, according to the Eurostat data ZF centralized. In Poland, 5.7% of the employees are managers, while in the Czech Republic, the percentage stands at 4.7%.
“In the financial services sector, the ratio of managers to employees (span of control) is usually higher than in other industries, and in BCR’s case there is one manager for every 14 employees. The more sophisticated businesses an economy has, such as the UK does, the higher the number of managers,” says Andreea Voinea, HR executive director with Romania’s largest bank by assets, BCR.
“Unfortunately, in Romania, the number of companies that have arrived in the past few years, especially the services outsourcing companies do not have such complex businesses so the number of employees reporting to a manager may reach as much as 30.”
An employee structure with few managers has its weak points, believes Madalina Balan, managing partner HR consultancy HART Consulting Romania.
“Romania as an emerging country is facing cost pressures to stay competitive and this led to team leaders in the outsourcing services business having 15 to 20 or even 30 people reporting to them, which is a lot. The optimal number of people a manager should supervise is eight to ten, as research has shown.”
However, it is only natural for Romania to have less than 2% of its employees working on management positions, because it is a result of the transition process the country is going through, experts say.
“Unless Romanian managers become mobile and take on regional roles and the entrepreneurial businesses increase production and expand to other markets, the percentage of managers among total employees will not go up,” says headhunter Oana Ciornei, managing partner with executive search firm Amrop Romania.
“Unlike Romania, Poland, for instance, has about 15 entrepreneurial businesses that generate more than EUR1 billion revenue.”
The countries with a lower percentage of managers in the total number of employees than Romania are Greece (1.6%), Croatia (1.5%) and Italy (1.3%).
“The low percentage of managers in Romania in the total number of employees can be explained first of all by the lower share of the services sector in the country’s economy. This sector employs a high number of managers,” says Florin Godean, country manager of temporary workforce recruitment and leasing firm Adecco Romania.
“In Romania we’re talking a share of almost 50% compared with the European average of 70%. The low number of managers therefore becomes a consequence of this economic reality. Moreover, statistics show a high number of employees in manufacturing and assembly business (15.3%).”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)