Abusive Bosses Remain a Hurdle for Keeping the Workplace Environment Safe and Productive  

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Whether you’ve been in the workplace for a few years or a few decades, odds are you’ve tolerated a toxic, abusing boss; more than 71 percent of U.S. workers have had at least one such supervisor in their career, according to a recent Harris Poll survey.  

The survey found that 72 percent of American workers endure abusive bosses due to financial reasons and that currently 31 percent of the workforce is working under an abusive boss. And more than half of those with abusive bosses admit to having nightmares about them.   

“We know that bosses inclined to hostility do not abuse/bully all their employees. They tend to pick targets strategically, going after employees who come across as weak and vulnerable (unable or unwilling to defend themselves)," according to Bennett Tepper, the Abramowitz Professor in the Department of Management and Human Resources at The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business.  

Tepper points out that we are more likely to observe abusive/bully bossing when managerial leaders are themselves under heavy performance pressure. Bosses who are stressed and exhausted have more difficulty exercising self-control, which can manifest itself as abusive/bully behavior. A stressed/exhausted boss will not show the best version of themselves. The results from our most recent study – “Abuse vs Tough Love’’ – suggests that hostile leaders are more likely to get a “pass’’ for their behavior when they and their work team perform well. So, high performance pressure encourages abusive behavior and accomplishing high performance goals appears to excuse it  (the hostile leader is viewed as a “tough love’’ boss rather than an abuser, ‘’ said Tepper.    

So, is work place abuse really on the rise?  

 “We’re not aware of robust research suggesting that the problem is on the rise,’’ said Tepper.  “We’ve been studying the phenomenon for over two decades and during that time, the frequency with which employees report having been the target of bully/abusive bossing has remained constant. Across studies, around 10 percent of employees report that their bosses engage  in abusive/bully behaviors. There are workplace trends that might lead us to expect changes in the frequency with which employees report boss abuse: the increasing sensitivity to instances of workplace hostility ranging from subtle micro-aggressions to outrageous abuses of power, the increasing reliance on communication technologies (emails that don’t follow the politeness norms that we are used to seeing in face-to-face interaction), and generational differences with respect to interpersonal communication norms. But, so far, we’re not seeing that translate into actual/observable changes in the frequency of the phenomenon,’’ said Tepper, a leading expert on abusive bosses.  

Still, some abusive bosses are turning workplaces into a killing field.  A court has backed a family lawsuit which blames Home Depot for the death of an employee who was killed and raped by her supervisor while she was seven months pregnant.  

Brian Cooper, 39, is serving two life sentences for killing Alisha Bromfield, 21 and her unborn baby at her sisters’ wedding in Wisconsin in 2012.  

And a Las Vegas county official is accused of murdering a journalist who reported he was an abusive boss.  

The reporter, Jeff German, was stabbed to death outside his home in September 2022. Police investigators, and now a Clark County jury, concluded that his attacker was Robert Telles, who ran a county office that handles the estates of those who die without apparent heirs.   

A few months before his death, German wrote an article for The Las Vegas Review-Journal describing employees’ complaints that Telles had created a toxic work environment, demonstrated favoritism and had an improper relationship with a staff member. Telles denied the allegations. He lost his re-election bid and a month after the article came out German kept reporting the story.  

Prosecutors suggested that is why, on a hot September day, Telles went to German’s suburban home and hid in the bushes at the side of the home, waited for German and then stabbed him to death.  

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a hostile/abusive work environment can result from a wide range of behavior, including physical or sexual assaults or threats; offensive jokes, slurs, epithets, or insults; intimidation, bullying or ridicule; ostracism; offensive objects or pictures; and interference with work performance. All such behaviors should be reported immediately to the commission.  

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