Summer of ‘Who’s In Charge?’
With firms slashing management roles, and experienced employees off at the beach, more new hires will be left in charge this summer.
For decades, middle managers picked up the slack while the boss was on vacation. Sure, sometimes frontline workers needed to figure out who to call while the boss enjoyed his triathlon cruise; luckily, a manager was usually nearby. But in the summer of 2026, guess who’s manning the ship?
With hiring picking up, a surprising number of firms are delegating management roles or key decisions to new or relatively inexperienced workers. And it’s not as if the summer—with everything from wars and AI creating a slew of disruptions—has been a slow season. What’s a new hire to do? “The risk is that new hires can feel isolated and unsupported and be reluctant to make decisions when leaders are away,” says engagement expert Mark Royal, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.
In all, some 560,000 jobs were added to the US economy in March, April, and May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Recent hires, who have yet to accrue PTO, spend much of their first summer in the office, while longtime employees enjoy multiweek vacations. And to be sure, while new employees have always been stuck at their desks during the summer, a series of management layoffs have created a noticeable void in corporate hierarchies. Indeed, some 41% of employees said their firms had slashed management, according to Korn Ferry data, with 37% saying they now feel “directionless.”
Experts say most managers and leaders plan appropriately for tasks and projects while they are away, but that many fail to think through the delegating of authority. The result: Decisions don’t get made, and employees are unsure of whom to ask. “Projects bog and slow down,” says Royal. Some leaders also head off on vacation without prioritizing work for those who remain, forcing new employees to carry their typical workloads plus that of vacationing colleagues or managers. Determining priorities can be tough in such cases, says Royal. He advises about-to-vacation bosses to empower employees to make decisions—and provide clear escalation points so that they know who to talk to, and when, if they run into hard choices or trouble.
A military trick of the trade works well here, says JP Sniffen, practice leader at the Military Center of Expertise at Korn Ferry: Leaders can articulate end goals, clearly specifying the outputs they expect to be completed during their absence. For example, a boss might ask for a list of ten potential candidates for a new role, with the objective of interviewing them upon returning from vacation. “It’s tasks with metrics attached that the boss won’t be able to micromanage while gone,” says Sniffen. Workers thus know that the candidates are the highest priority.
Experts also advise improved proactive planning of time away—much more so than in the past, when ever-present managers redistributed work in the boss’s absence so that neither leaders nor employees needed to think about it. “These days you need to have coverage—and make sure you have a Plan A and a Plan B,” says Renee Whalen, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.
And the scarcity of managers does provide new hires with an opportunity to step up—to make appearances in meetings, for example, or take on key roles on projects. This only happens with trust and appropriate support, says Royal. “Rather than feeling that work is being dumped on them, summer can feel like accelerated development,” he says.
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