The Price of Poor Management

Even model employees can become negative and unproductive if their bosses are rude or mean-spirited or they feel put down or treated unfairly by their managers.

According to a new study by the University of Florida, gossiping, pilfering, backstabbing and long lunch breaks become the norm not just for workplace malcontents but even for exemplary employees who feel a lack of respect and recognition from above.

"When employees feel they're mistreated, they get even," said University of Florida management professor, Timothy Judge. "If they think their supervisor is nasty toward them, they will find a way to restore that perceived level of injustice.

"Employees have a tendency to respond to mistreatment, which means that trying to identify and weed out 'bad eggs' in the selection process is not enough," he said. "It's not that simple."

The findings are important because employers often act as if workers' attitudes are irrelevant and have no effect on how well they perform, he said.

Judge said he and a consultant asked human resource professionals several years ago about the value of job satisfaction and were amazed to hear such comments as "it's a foreign term around here" and "the subject is never brought up."

Many companies assume employees are motivated only by opportunities to earn more money or by the threat of losing their jobs, not realizing that positive management-labor relations influence how long workers remain with an employer and the extent to which they engage in helping behaviors, he said.

"Training supervisors to treat employees with respect is not something that costs employers a lot of money, and it can produce real dividends."

Professor Judge's team looked at how people's moods influenced their work attitudes. Their immediate supervisors also completed an online questionnaire indicating how often the employee had done things such as steal property from work, litter the work environment, curse at co-workers or leave work without permission.

The results, published in the January issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, showed that all employees misbehaved under certain conditions, particularly if they were angry at work, disliked their jobs or believed their supervisors were unfair.

Most important was the amount of hostility employees felt, which was influenced by how they thought their supervisors treated them.

"If your supervisor is mean or rude to you, it increases your workplace deviance because it makes you angry and frustrated," Judge said.

Unfortunately, many human resource departments adopt police and practices designed to squelch bad behavior rather than look for its root causes, he said.