Your boss can make or break your job experience: a good boss, smooth sailing ahead. A bad boss? Misery. According to a new workplace study, most employees are dealing with the latter.
The research comes from Harris Poll’s Thought Leadership Practice who just conducted its Toxic Boss survey, which included online responses from 1,334 employed U.S. adults. It defined a toxic boss as someone who “exhibits harmful workplace behaviors, including unfair preferential treatment, lack of recognition, blame-shifting, unnecessary micromanagement, unreasonable expectations, being unapproachable, taking credit for others’ ideas, acting unprofessionally, or discriminating against employees based on personal characteristics.”
A staggering six out of 10 workers said they currently have a toxic boss. Meanwhile, 70% say they’ve had a toxic boss at some point in their career. This rises to 75% for LGBTQIA+ workers.
The impact is significant. Nearly half (47%) say their boss’s bad behavior is stressing them out, burning them out, or causing their mental health to slide downhill. Meanwhile, one-third say bad bosses have caused them to lose money, either because their behavior caused them to miss out on financial rewards or stalled their chances at a promotion.
Most workers cope by working harder. The majority of workers (66%) say they’ve responded to toxic bosses by trying to meet their demands — working on weekends and on days off. Two-thirds of workers also say they’ve changed jobs because of a toxic job. But either way, workers are seeking mental health care to cope with how they feel about the situation. More than half (53%) have gone to therapy over their toxic boss.
And while some workers say they avoid reporting their bosses’ behavior at all costs to avoid deepening the conflict, many are pushing back. More than half (55%) say they’ve taken at least one action to push back against their boss’s harmful behavior. Interestingly, it’s Gen Z who is stepping up the most: 73% of workers have pushed back against a toxic boss.
Largely, workers say bad bosses are a result of external pressures: 71% blamed current economic conditions for high stress around the office. The AI race is playing an important role in driving toxic boss energy, too: 44% of workers said that their company invests more in AI than things like providing one-on-one coaching for people managers, and training the next generation of leaders within the company.
“We’re in the largest technology investment cycle in a generation, and the human side of work is being left behind,” says Libby Rodney, Chief Strategy Officer at The Harris Poll. “Toxic leadership isn’t a character flaw. It’s an investment failure. These are today’s managers who were never trained or held to a standard, and now we’re asking them to lead through a transformation they weren’t equipped for before AI even arrived.”
For the majority of employees, the solution is clear. It’s not less of an emphasis on AI, or even better pay: it’s more support. Sixty-four percent of workers said better leadership training is the best way to reduce toxic behavior and build healthier workplaces.