Horrible Bosses: The Time of Tolerance Is Over
- By Sheila Lam
- September 26, 2022
Remember the movie Horrible Bosses? The toxic working environments, often created by immediate supervisors, still resonate with many these days.
Despite employee experience being high on many companies’ agendas, one in four employees is still experiencing a high rate of toxic workplace behaviors, according to the latest global study from McKinsey Health Institute (MIH). The non-profit generating organization surveyed 15,000 employees and 1,000 HR decision-makers across 15 countries earlier this year.
If your bosses are difficult, your life will be difficult
MIH defines toxic workplace behavior as interpersonal behavior that leads to employees feeling unvalued, belittled, or unsafe. These behaviors include unfair or demeaning treatment, cutthroat competition, abusive management, and unethical behavior from leaders or coworkers.
“In all 15 countries and across all dimensions assessed, toxic workplace behavior had the biggest impact predicting burnout symptoms and intent to leave by a large margin,” stated the report.
The study found these toxic workplace behaviors made it eight times more likely for employees to experience burnout symptoms and six times more likely to report an intent to leave the company.
Peter Cappelli, professor of management and director, Centre for Human Resources, The Wharton School said that companies could reduce the chances of people leaving if they ensured that the supervisors were not abusive. “If your bosses are difficult, your life will be difficult.”
Speaking at the recent Economist Impact Webinar, Cappelli said leadership is often the problem of toxic workplace behaviors. Leaders are often chosen based on their contribution to the business instead of people management skills. They lack attention to relationships and recognition to create a supportive environment.
“Someone has to be willing to follow up and talk with the supervisors,” he said. “No one at the top is there to say, ‘no, we don’t want you to get ahead by beating others.”
Wellness programs only deal with symptoms
As a substitute, organizations turn their attention and resources toward wellness programs.
Cappelli added organizational culture tends to encourage employees to handle things individually as a sign of being capable and competent. Thus, wellness programs are provided to help employees to manage the problem individually.
“Wellness programs frankly don’t work,” he said. “They are dealing with individual stress levels, instead of the workplace environment.”
Erica Coe, partner at McKinsey & Company and co-lead for MIH, added that many organizations also treat employees’ mental health, wellbeing, and burnout as personal problems instead of organizational issues. Therefore, the responses focus on the symptoms rather than the environment's root cause.
“Burnout is experienced by individuals, but the most powerful drivers of burnout are systemic organizational imbalances across job demands and job resources,” said Coe.
The wellness programs are often one-off events or separated apps, added Meilin Wong, CEO and co-founder of Singapore-based tech-led holistic healthcare startup iSabel. These fragmented solutions are not helping organizations to measure their overall status and deal with the workplace environment holistically.
A systemic approach
Coe said organizations need to address the issue of burnout and toxic workplace behavior with a systematic approach.
“Employers can and should view high rates of burnout as a powerful warning sign that the organization — not the individuals in the workforce — needs to undergo meaningful systematic change,” noted the MIH report of which Coe is also a co-author.
But it is easier said than done. On top of organizational culture and leadership, experts said organizations need to recognize the problem and take accountability to handle it. “Employers often do nothing to follow up with employees survey, that’s a place to start,” said Cappelli.
“One thing that many don’t do is to find out what is wrong within the organization. What are the gaps? What is working and what is not?” added Wong from iSabel. “If you don’t measure what’s the current state of wellbeing, how can you tell I’ve reached my goal?”
Coe said identifying the problem and measuring its impact is essential to handle employee mental health strategically and systematically. She added that it is difficult to articulate how efficiently resources are allocated without measurement. Without a precise measurement, HR leaders would also find it difficult to justify the ROI of their initiatives.
Wong added that the measurement includes utilizing the tools or program and identifying the content or conversation topics. “If there’s a spike on conversations about ‘stress’ so they can look at what happened recently to cause this conversation,” she said.
To help spark organization-wide conversation and drive a systematic approach toward handling toxic workplace behavior, MIH offers eight target questions with the potential to address burnout-related challenges.
- Do we treat employee mental health and wellbeing as a strategic priority?
- Do we effectively address toxic behaviors?
- Do we create inclusive work environments?
- Do we enable individual growth?
- Do we promote sustainable work?
- Are we holding leaders accountable?
- Are we effectively tackling stigma?
- Do our resources serve employee needs?
“Employers that take the time to understand the problem at hand—and pursue a preventative, systemic approach focused on causes instead of symptoms—should see material improvements in outcomes and succeed in attracting and retaining valuable talent,” the report concluded.
Sheila Lam is the contributing editor of CDOTrends. Covering IT for 20 years as a journalist, she has witnessed the emergence, hype, and maturity of different technologies but is always excited about what's next. You can reach her at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/jgroup