A survey of visitors to the wonderfully-named Badbossology.com has found that almost half (48 per cent) of U.S. workers would like to fire their boss. One in three would have their boss assessed by a workplace psychologist and a quarter think they should be sent for some management training.
The site’s co-founder Gary Lahey said: "These results seem consistent with psychologist Dr Robert Hogan's suggestion that at least 55 per cent of managers in America are incompetent.
"And, in general, given the human and financial costs, it's really time for corporate America to get serious about bad bosses."
Several other surveys have found that a bad boss is the biggest single cause of staff leaving a company, most notably a Gallup survey of over 1,000,000 employees that revealed that poorly managed workgroups are an average of 50 per cent less productive and 44 per cent less profitable than well-managed groups.
Research also suggests that poor management is the also the issue that makes employees most angry about their jobs.
Other studies have found a correlation between sickness absence and poor management style, while bad bosses can even increase the long-term risks of a heart attack or stroke by driving their employees' blood pressure.
Sadly, however, bad bosses do not always get their just deserts. Researchers at the Technion Institute in Israel have found that aggressive managers who blame others when things go wrong are more likely to get promoted than managers who feel guilty and accept responsibility for failure and that it actually pays for managers to loose their tempers.
