Study Reveals That A Bad Boss Can Make Employees Sick (Workplace Illness)

For 75% of Americans, bosses are a major cause of stress at work. An article published by Quartz magazine reveals that a bad boss can be as harmful to employees as passive smoking. The article also says that the longer you stay in a job working for someone who stresses you, the greater the damage is to your physical and mental health.

Worse than cigarettes Researchers at the Harvard Business School and Stanford University in the United States gathered data from over 200 studies and found that stress at work can be as harmful to the health as the exposure to a considerable amount of smoke from other people's cigarettes just like passive smoking. The main reason for stress at work for most employees is the risk of losing their jobs. As a consequence, chances are that these employees are 50% more prone to health problems than their colleagues.
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We all have bad days at work, and from time to time we may end up in a disagreement with the boss. The problem isn't the occasional bad day or workplace disagreement, rather it's when these problems are drawn out over months or even years, thereby causing an actual illness in the employees so affected. The Huffington Post (January 10, 2017) discussed this in its article  "How Your Toxic Boss Is Hurting Your Mental Health"

"The emotional damage from an unhealthy management culture is nothing new. There's no question, management practices can damage the mental health of a company's employees.

 When unhealthy management and leadership harms employees, it also harms their work performance. Most everyone is familiar with the damaging effects of abusive, hostile, arrogant and narcissistic bosses; of manipulative or deceitful leadership behavior.

Unhealthy leadership and the culture it spawns typically disseminates downward. It drains away high-performing, energized, engaged employees, including the innovative teamwork companies need to stay nimble and competitive -- especially today. Moreover, an unhealthy management culture fuels emotional conflicts among employees who weren't overtly troubled prior to working in that environment." (Douglas LaBier, Ph.D. Psychology Today, August 17, 2010)

When organizational leadership allows a poor working environment to continue over an extended period of time (months) and when that situation causes a documented mental or emotional illness, then the organization may be held responsible for this workplace created illness.