Labor & Employment Law

Do you hate your job?

By Michael Fitzgibbon

If yes, you're not alone.   Diane Pfadenhauer points out that a recent Gallup survey finds that 77% of Americans Hate Their Jobs.  This was picked up by Jay Shepherd at Ept managers lead to gruntled employees where he discusses another poll:

On the other hand, 90% of managers think they're in the top 10% of performers. This from a BusinessWeek poll of 2,000 US executives and middle managers (article here, poll results here). (Rob May's Businesspundit.com turned me on to these results.) Most of these respondents are, of course, wrong ? and suffering from the Lake Wobegon effect.

Here's some more stats from a Florida State University study scheduled for publication in the Fall 2007 (thanks to Some bad boss statistics):

• 40 per cent of workers in the business world think they work for bad bosses
• 39 per cent said their managers failed to keep promises
• 37 per cent said their bosses did not give them the credit they deserved
• 23 per cent stated that their supervisor blamed them or other workers to cover up personal mistakes

This highlights some significant organizational risks.  Employees often quit because of their manager.  If the manager thinks, to use Jay's word, they're just "swell", how can this problem be solved?  If managers are not "swell" and in fact are damaging to the organization, then it clearly falls on senior management to take action (unless, of course, senior management also think all is well, which raises other issues altogether).

Full post as published by Thoughts from a Management Lawyer on September 12, 2007 (boomark / email).