By Rachel Puryear

At some point in our lives, you’ve probably had an awful, toxic boss. We’ve all been there.

From bosses who demand longer hours without corresponding increases in pay, to those who micro-manage and breathe down your neck, to creepy ones who violate personal boundaries, to those who take all the credit for your work, to those who are super controlling and strictly enforce rigid rules for no good reason – just because someone is in a leadership position, does not mean they have any business being there.

So, how do all these toxic bosses tend to respond to decisions about whether to allow employees to work from home where possible, or to return to office just for the sake of it?

Well, as it turns out, I have news for you about that probably won’t shock you, and that maybe you’ve even known deep down all along: the ones you want to work from home to get away from are pretty much the same ones who want to drag you back into the office.

And that’s in spite of studies finding that having employees in office doesn’t improve business productivity or profitability, and instead costs them good employees.

That’s right, the bosses you can’t stand are most likely the ones who can’t seem to get enough of you, according to a study led by a professor at University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business.

The main takeaways of this study included the following findings:

• In-office workers are NOT more productive than work-from-home employees.
• Businesses with strict policies requiring workers to return to the office are NOT more profitable than businesses more willing to allow workers to work from home.
• Controlling bosses tend to prefer requiring employees to return to the office – even when they could do their jobs from home – and like to use employees as scapegoats for bad performance.

Furthermore, it simply costs more to have employees working in-office than it does for them to be working at home. Having in-office employees requires overhead costs including office space, parking, equipment, and so forth – costs that are mostly saved by having employees work from home instead.

Not to mention the increased HR costs in having more toxic work environment type of complaints with in-office work, and more turnover as employees are generally less loyal to employers who arbitrarily refuse to let them work from home.

Perhaps shareholders should be taking a closer look at the ramifications of a company keeping controlling bosses on the payroll.

Investors should make no mistake – controlling bosses, and the toxic work environments they help create, are a liability and a drain on profits. Abusive bosses seem quite willing to hurt the company as a whole in order to have their own way.

Controlling bosses also might operate on fear of losing their jobs, presuming that if people can work from home, the company doesn’t need as many supervisors – and would cut supervisory positions if work-from-home arrangements became more of a norm.

Interestingly, this view seems to overlook the leadership and training aspects of supervisory positions – suggesting that controlling bosses rely more on instilling fear to maintain control than on leadership skills to make their most of their employee talent, and this would not be surprising.

So what can be done about this? Well, there’s no easy answers to that. For what it’s worth, though, just know that arbitrary return-to-work policies are often more about a controlling boss than they are about what’s good for the company, or for anyone else for that matter. And consider that in deciding what companies to work for, do business with, or even to invest in.

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Thank you, dear readers, for reading, following, and sharing. Here’s to the bosses who trust their employees, and value morale, enough to give them more flexibility.

Check out my other blog, too – World Class Hugs, at https://worldclasshugs.com. It’s about celebrating empathic and HSS/HSP people, balanced versus toxic relationships, loving spirituality and spiritualism without religious dogma, and visiting gorgeous natural places.

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