Workshy bosses breed contempt in workforce

Washington: Turns out, workshy bosses can promote a contemptuous attitude amongst their staff - leading to anger, frustration and abuse in the workplace. A team of researchers, led by Drs Alison Legood and Allan Lee from the University of Exeter, have looked at how bad habits displayed by those in charge can affect the mentality and productivity of the workforce. They found that managers who procrastinate when making decisions and carrying out tasks not only leave employees feeling less committed to the business, but also more likely to display abnormal and unpleasant behaviour. Most alarmingly, this can escalate beyond taking unnecessary sick days to becoming abusive to colleagues, and stealing office supplies. “We have found procrastination from managers can be really detrimental to their staffand companies need to take action to ensure there are better relationships between bosses and employees,” said study researcher Dr Lee. “When bosses fail to do their work, knowing this will cause problems for others, it causes their staff to become frustrated and leaves them less committed to their employer,” Lee added. For the research, the team collected data from 290 employees on the impact of their leaders procrastinating, and measured how much managers procrastinated using a scale, based on questions such as: “my manager delays making decisions until it's too late”. The researchers also collected further information from 250 workers, and their 23 supervisors, in a Chinese textile manufacturing company located in Zhejiang Province. Staff were asked to rate their relationships with their bosses, and managers were asked to rate whether staff were deviant. The results showed when leaders procrastinate, it leads to “deviant behaviour” from their staff. — ANI