The Impact of “The Great Flattening” on Workplace Learning

In 1980, Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wrote about a planet that shot all their middle managers into space. Two-thirds of the planet invented a story about a pending apocalypse, convinced all their middlemen to get on a spaceship, and said they’d catch up later— but it was just a ploy to rid themselves of middle management and other allegedly “useless” jobs.

Life seems to be imitating art. Many companies are also ejecting their own middle management, although they’re using redundancy and restructuring instead of a spaceship, to jettison those workers. Called “The Great Flattening,” this trend has seen the elimination of thousands of management roles, with entire tiers of middle management vanishing at major companies like Citi, Amazon, and Meta.

The reasons given for the flattening are similar to those in Hitchhiker’s Guide — those organizations don’t think middle management is useful. Mark Zuckerberg referred to the cut positions at Meta as “just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.” At Bayer, executives plan to get rid of corporate bureaucracy and let employees manage themselves.

“The Great Flattening” is more than just a temporary elimination of middle management positions — the positions themselves aren’t coming back. Hiring for management is down. There were 42% fewer open middle management roles at the end of 2024 than in 2022. This trend appears to be a change in the way companies are structured, and that is likely to have implications for workplace learning.

What is ‘The Great Flattening’?

“The Great Flattening” (or “The Great Unbossing”) is used to describe the way some organizations have started removing layers of management, which effectively “flattens” the hierarchy in the workplace.

Traditionally, workplace hierarchies resembled pyramids: a small group of executives at the top made strategic decisions, middle managers executed them, and the bulk of employees carried out the day-to-day work. But in the past few years, the pyramid has started to collapse.

Like so many other trends, “The Great Flattening” can be traced back to the pandemic and the following “The Great Resignation.” When workers left their roles in droves in 2021, companies over-hired. In 2024, many workers weren’t quitting at all, contributing to “The Great Stay.” “The Great Flattening” is a reaction to these shifts in the workplace, as well as the automation and agility brought about by AI tools.

Other factors also contributed to this trend:

• Remote and hybrid work have made physical hierarchies irrelevant.
• Cross-functional teams are now the norm, not the exception.
• Younger generations want autonomy, flexibility, and meaning from work, and don’t value bureaucracy. Specifically, many Gen Z workers don’t want to be middle managers —  a recent survey found that 52% of Gen-Z professionals aren’t interested in these roles, because they’re considered “too high-stress and low-reward.”

As a result, power, decision-making, and expertise are being redistributed. Everyone in an organization is expected to think critically, collaborate across functions, and continuously adapt. However, this may have some unintended consequences for learning in the workplace, especially since managers often play an active role in development.

How flattened hierarchies impact workplace learning

Learning without managers will certainly look different than what we’re used to.

Despite the rush to get rid of middle managers, supervisors play a critical role in workplace learning. Learning & Development (L&D) may direct learning strategy and determine learning goals, but managers are the front line when it comes to reinforcing learning. A team might receive a training module about customer service, but it’s the manager’s job to reinforce the lessons learned in that training, to assess performance, and to provide feedback to team members. In fact, many workers expect and value that kind of coaching from their boss.

So what might learning without bosses look like?

‘Unbossing’ puts peer learning and skills front and center

In some cases, the Great Flattening aims to create organizations with as few as two layers: the top brass and the rest of the team. However, in larger companies, it’s unlikely that the C-suite will be dropping by everyone’s desks to offer up individualized feedback. Learning will have to change.

1. Learning will be everyone’s job. In a flat organization, everyone —f rom entry-level employees to executives — needs to be both learner and teacher. Peer-to-peer learning becomes much more important in a flattened environment, with workers seeking out peers who have the knowledge they need. L&D departments can facilitate this by building ecosystems that enable knowledge sharing.
2. Agile organizations will need agile learning. Microlearning and just-in-time learning are critical tools when employees need answers on the job. They need answers in the flow of work. This means workplaces are investing in tools that offer learning in the flow of work, such as embedded learning tools that can be used with other platforms, and AI-powered search functions.
3. Skills will become more important than job descriptions. Organizations are already moving away from job titles and roles and focusing more on skills, shaping work around the skills and interests of individual workers. This evolution will continue to empower team members to take on tasks that might have previously fallen outside their roles. It will also allow organizations to train team members with an interest in or aptitude for that skill. However, for this approach to work, an organization has to know who has which skills as well as which core skills are needed — and only 10% of companies currently have those insights. Training Industry’s 2025 Trends Report listed skills transparency initiatives as a major L&D trend going into the next year.
4. Coaching and mentoring will change. Even in “unbossed” organizations, workers still need coaches. Coaching is an individualized approach to learning which shapes workers while taking their goals into account. The International Coaching Federation found that employees at every level appreciate coaching, with high approval from senior executives (78%) and employees (73%). With fewer managers, L&D departments may need to take a skills-based approach to coaching, pairing employees with peers who have specific skillsets to share. Teams may also adopt rotating mentorship roles, such as team coach or feedback facilitator.
5. Feedback will come from different sources. With no manager, where might feedback come from? L&D will need to tap other sources of input when it comes to training. This might mean using team and peer feedback, using AI, or embracing a culture of self-reflection.

Learning in a leaderless landscape

The Great Flattening isn’t just a reorganization, it’s a reinvention of the workplace. As companies shed layers of management, they’re also changing long-held assumptions about how leadership, learning, and growth should happen. While the loss of middle managers may feel like the loss of vital support for employee development, it also presents a bold opportunity: to democratize learning, rethink feedback, and create organizations where knowledge flows laterally, not just from the top down.

In this new landscape, learning isn’t a function of hierarchy,it’s a function of culture. Organizations that thrive in a flattened world will be those that invest in transparent skill systems, foster peer-led learning ecosystems, and empower every employee to be both a learner and a teacher.

We may not be shooting our middle managers into space, but we are sending our old ideas about hierarchy and development out the airlock. The challenge now is to build something better in their place.