The CX Blog

It’s said that “employees don’t leave their companies, they leave their boss.” Wayne Hochwarter decided to dig a little deeper and find out if it was true.  He polled 700 employees regarding their direct supervisors and what he found was disturbing:

• 31%  of respondents reported that their supervisor gave them the “silent treatment” in the past year.Thirty-seven percent reported that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
• 29% noted that their supervisor failed to keep promises.
• 27% noted that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
• 24% reported that their supervisor invaded their privacy.
• 23% indicated that their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment

Sound familiar?  I have no doubt anyone reading this has experience at least one of the above situations, if not all.  And what does this kind of behavior gain in the long (or even the short) run?  Loss of talent, as the employee withdraws his/her energy and at some point simply leaves; loss of recruitment and training moneys that served to beef up the employee’s resume, but ultimately does nothing for the company.

I’ve written elsewhere about asshole bosses and there’s a whole treatise on it on Change This. More than just being offensive, the issue is downright destructive and counterproductive.  How is it that those above the abusers can’t 1) see the problem, and 2) do anything about it?

One might ask, What can we do about it?  Lots.  There’s training, there’s awareness work, there’s the potential of job loss to “coerce” better behavior.  For sure doing nothing will result in loss of talent, money and time, so why not be proactive? Deal with the jerk now.

Another bit of information rolling around out there on this topic is the current move towards outing your bad boss. PRdisasters touches on this and points us to two new examples of online hate fests for bad bosses:  ebosswatch and badbossology. While this might get out of hand down the road, I can only imagine the impact of “the whole world is watching” will be positive–abusers generally hate the bright light of day shining down upon them.