According to a survey of 2,300 people by Work Life Balance Centre and Coventry University, 90% of British workers say their managers are indecisive, unproactive or inaccessible, demotivating, inconsistent and controlling.
It found just 4% of those polled rated their managers as inspirational, while nearly a 25% concluded they were actively demotivating. Just 7% of respondents saw their managers as empowering, against almost three times as many who felt them to be controlling. On a more positive note, less than a fifth of the workers polled said they had experienced bullying by a manager, with slightly more than one in five admitting to having observed it happening.
A tenth of the sample had experienced bullying by a colleague, with women being much more likely to be on the receiving end than men. The survey also found middle managers were the most likely to report bullying by colleagues, with administrative and clerical or professional workers the least likely.
The survey found that bullying was more widespread in telecoms, IT, engineering, transport and higher education, and was less evident in business services, schools, manufacturing and retail
Denise Skinner, professor of HR management at Coventry University, and the report’s author, believes improvements also need to be made in the way people are treated when they ask for help with work/life balance issues. The survey found that less than one-third of those who asked their employer for help found it effective while a quarter found the support to be ineffective with a further 13.9% finding it made things worse.
Source: Personnel Today, 1 April 2008
Posted by extendeddisc 