Lot of us have experienced that feeling of being unappreciated at work. It is harmful to both employees and companies because of these ‘bad or worst bosses’, who engage in behaviour such as abusing, bullying, and undermining. This behaviour at workplace could reduce job satisfaction, a rise in health complaints, and counterproductive employee behaviours.
The common form of mistreatment at work known as supervisor social undermining. This is when a supervisor purposefully tries to delay an employee’s success at work, interfere with their ability to maintain positive work relationships and attempts to tarnish their reputation.
So, who reacts severely to supervisor social undermining?
Employees with hard core self-evaluations, also who have trust in workplace management, are most likely to experience the stress when they get undermined.
The term “Core self-evaluation” means how much someone believe on their worth and deem themselves capable of handling difficult tasks and challenges. When an individual is faced with a high core self-evaluations problem, they believe, “I can handle this problem.” However, when exposed to boss’ undermining, they are more likely to become stressed, which in turn distorts their self-evaluation, resulting in performance with regrets, and at times push them leave the company.
Strangely, employees who have high self-concept or high trust in management are least likely to express or report undermining. Also, these employees would have strongest response to undermining when it actually happens to them. Unfortunately, companies fail to attract and retain these types of employees. It is suggested in companies’ best interest to eradicate undermining from the workplace completely to embrace the most valuable employees.
How can companies hold on to these employees
Managers who are undermining their employees should be provided with appropriate training to improve their leadership abilities. These training programs should be used to educate managers on how to identify undermining behaviours in themselves and to avoid them. If training fails, then the manager should be removed from their leadership position completely and immediately.
Organizations should act in a consistent manner and should not create appalling work conditions of surprise or uncertainty. A positive environment, with no undermining and high trust would benefit both the employees and company; at times eliminating the intrusion (the undermining manager) is inevitable for the company’s growth.
If companies fail to monitor and eliminate supervisor undermining, they will continue to lose their best employees. Consequently, they will have to spend more time and money on hiring, training, and assimilating new employees to replace those who decide to leave.