Expert: Bosses who cause problems'too expensive to keep'

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-p2bosses_10bus.ART.State.Edition1.35b104b.html

St Petersburg Times

Thanks to the Internet, employees with a difficult boss can vent to a wide audience, not just in undertones to the nearest person.

A Web site called eBossWatch.com, which launched this summer with the slogan "Nobody should have to work for a jerk," is one example of this phenomenon.

It, like blogged tirades and the AFL-CIO's annual My Bad Boss contest, hit on an important point: Bosses can't afford to be jerks, not when the economy is in a "war for talent" mode.

It might be fun to watch Donald Trump chew out hapless sycophants on The Apprentice, but most people don't want to work for someone like him.

"Bad bosses are too expensive to keep," said Gary Namie, president of Work Doctor Inc., of Bellingham, Wash., which advises businesses on how to prevent bullying. "They cost turnover, absenteeism, lawsuits, workers' comp claims and a tarnished reputation."

Wayne Hochwarter, a Florida State University business professor who has studied workplace dynamics extensively, has a theory on why there are so many bad managers: A lot of them were promoted because they were competent at their former job, say, selling cars, but don't have a clue how to manage other people doing the job.

FULL story at link.

[tech3149]

1. Unfortunately, bad bosses are like weeds

You turn your back for a minute and they're everywhere. I took on the responsibility of service manager with the last company I worked for but still had to be out on the road doing the work. I told the people I worked with that if things worked out it was because of them, if not, it was my fault. My ex spent years trying to educate the owners of that company that it cost way more to indoctrinate and educate new employees than to pay the good ones enough to keep them. Someone should really look into MBA and business major curriculum to see where these people are learning such stupid fallacious concepts. It's like they can't see beyond the next quarterly report.