75% Of Employees Say Their Direct Manager Is “The Worst Part Of Their Job”

Wow.

I feel like the relationship between employee and direct manager has been doomed for years now. Some people have great immediate bosses, and that’s all good for them. But for most people, it seems as if the direct manager ends up becoming the worst part of a job.

Consider a little bit of research: per Hogan Assessments (2014), about 75% of employees report that “the worst part of their job” is their direct manager. 65% of employees would prefer a new boss over a pay raise. That’s all some heady stuff — you need money to have the kind of life you want, and people are still saying “Hold the money, and please remove my ass clown of a direct manager.” Almost 7 in 10 people are saying that? Wow.

Finally by way of intro: we know that 41% of employees globally will do a significant job search this year, and almost all of them list “bad manager” as the №1 reason why.

So where does all this suss out? What can we do?

Direct manager caveats

Take that 65% stat above. Find one of the people who fell into the 65%. Now offer them a raise and the same boss. They’re probably taking the raise. We all know that. People sometimes lie on surveys, or they give a contextual answer — like maybe that day, their direct manager was awful. This is why it’s so amazing that companies base so many decisions off surveys, which are snapshots in time. Anyway, that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Also, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad employee — and that goes for managers too. Some managers are terrible in one role/department, and if they switch companies/roles, they’d get better. That’s because of the monster we’re going to confront in the next section.

Why are so many direct managers so bad?

If the monster has multiple heads, they’d be:

• The organization itself lacks priority
• Most of the focus is ultimately on process
• The concept of managing others is not intuitive to many
• Face to face communication is replaced by hiding behind a platform