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Business

Hate your boss? You’re not alone

admin
January 9th, 2013


This article is more than 11 years old.

Bad managers harming workplaces and economy in general, say scholars

Every third employee – nearly one million Danes – feels their immediate manager is doing a lousy job, according to a survey conducted by the consulting firm Ennova.

“There are 100,000 managers who should, according to their employees, never have been made leaders. That is too many,” Henry D Sørensen of Ennova told Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Nearly 35 percent of the country's workforce was “extremely critical” of their immediate superiors. They said that their work days were poisoned by unclear objectives, poor planning and a lack of feedback and staff development. Bad leadership mostly infects small businesses, which employ half of the workers in the private sector.

Management experts cited the lack of training and knowledge of best practises among the nation’s managers as the reason for employee dissatisfaction.

“Bad management lowers not just morale and job satisfaction among employees, it also leads to lower productivity, lower competitiveness and lower contribution to the gross domestic product,” Steen Hildebrandt, a professor at the Aarhus School of Business, told Jyllands-Posten. “Bad management is not just a problem for companies, but also for the country as a whole.”

Professor Børge Obel, from the University of Aarhus, said management problems could be harming the country's international competitiveness.

"The need for good management is increasing because we are in a global world and that leads to more competition all around,” Obel told Jyllands-Posten.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”