How to deal with an abusive boss

A recent research suggests three ways to fight abusive supervisors at work.

A new research now says that employees who are being bullied by their bosses are much more likely to be under work stress, become less committed to the jobs or even retaliate.

The research, done by Portland State University and published in the Journal of Management, highlights the consequences of an abusive supervision, which is becoming increasingly common in workplaces

The researchers reviewed 427 studies and quantitatively aggregated the results to better understand why and how bullying bosses can decrease organisational citizenship behaviour or the voluntary extras you do that aren't part of your job responsibilities and increase counter-productive work behaviour.

Examples of such behaviours include sabotage at work, coming into work late, taking longer-than-allowed breaks, doing tasks incorrectly or withholding effort, all of which can affect your team and co-worker, they attributed the negative work behaviours to either perceptions of injustice or work stress.

Having a bullying boss can also lead to work stress, which reduces an employee's ability to control negative behaviours or contribute to the organisation in a positive way.

"Stress is sometimes uncontrollable. You don't sleep well, so you come in late or take a longer break, lash out at your co-workers or disobey instructions," said Liu-Qin Yang, the study's co-author.

The researchers recommended three suggestions to curb abusive supervision:

1. Launching regular training programmes to help supervisors learn and adopt more effective interpersonal and management skills when interacting with their employees.

2. Implementing fair policies and procedures to reduce employees' perceptions of injustice in the organisation and

3. Ensuring employees have sufficient resources to perform their job, such as by offering stress management training.