More than 80% of Americans are stressed about their jobs, and 75% of people said the most stressful aspect is their boss. Although a few bad bosses seem inevitable, the chronic stress they cause costs companies $300 billion annually. What can companies do about bad bosses and the stress they cause?

We’ve all dealt with them – the employee that makes questionable decisions around the office, whether that’s stealing some pens from the supply closet or, more seriously, pocketing company revenue on the sly.

It’s “time to admit that some people are more vulnerable to unethical temptations than others,” says Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Hogan Assessments’ vp of research and innovation, “and managers can play an important role in attenuating (or increasing) the rate of unethical incidents in their teams and organizations.” Here are some tips on how to manage these morally weak employees.

Engage them. Even less ethical individuals will be more likely to act morally if they are engaged at work. By the same token, alienating employees may enhance moral disengagement even in those with higher integrity.

Lead by example.  For managers, the implication is clear: if you want your employees to act morally, start by acting morally yourself.

Pair them with ethical peers. Teaming your less moral employees with colleagues who have strong integrity will motivate them to behave more ethically. Humans learn via observation and imitation, and much of this learning occurs without awareness.

Invest in moral training. Organizations can influence employees’ ethical choices via explicit educational programs. For example, the Ethics Resource Center reports that businesses that implement formal programs to support ethical choices, such as whistleblowing, decrease counterproductive behaviors and misconduct rates, as well as increasing employee satisfaction.

Reduce their temptation. Everybody has a dark side, but the antisocial aspects of our personalities are much more likely to surface in toxic environments or situations of weak moral pressure. It is hard to change someone’s personality, but managers can do a great deal to affect the environment employees inhabit.

Create an altruistic culture. Although organizational culture cannot be created overnight, meta-analytic reviews have demonstrated that a caring culture prevents unethical work behaviors, whereas a culture of self-interest promotes them.

Find out how to put these tips into action in our ebook 6 Ways to Keep Your Manager Honest.

In business, the adage holds true that one bad apple can spoil the bunch – even one dishonest manager can cost companies hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, in low morale and lost productivity. Unfortunately, history shows that there is more than one bad apple in the business world, and dishonest work behaviors, such as staff abuse, rule bending, and theft cost the economy billions each year.

How can organizations combat dishonesty in their management team? They can start by recognizing why dishonest individuals are such enticing hires. Unfortunately, the same attractive qualities we find in these candidates are the same qualities that will short change us in the long run.

1. Charisma – Psychologists recorded 73 first-year college students individually introducing themselves to a group. The study found students with narcissistic tendencies excelled at making initial impressions. They used more charming facial expressions, a more confident speaking tone, were funnier, wore more fashionable clothes and had trendier haircuts.

2. Self-absorption – The second characteristic is an unusual degree of self-absorption, or, more to the point, a relentless drive for self-advancement. These individuals possess a ruthless dedication to self-advancement to the extent that other people lose their value as humans and become objects to be manipulated.

3. Self-Deception – Ben Dattner, author of The Blame Game, notes that narcissists “lead with the main purpose of receiving personal credit or glory. When things go wrong or they make mistakes, they deny or distort information and rewrite history in order to avoid getting blamed.”

4. Hollow Core Syndrome – The underlying dynamic that unifies these themes is a pattern of personality characteristics called the hollow core syndrome. The hollow core refers to people who are overtly self-confident, but who are privately self-doubting and unhappy.

Learn more about combating dishonesty in the workplace and managing the dishonest employee.

The Psychometrics Forum invites you to their September event, Illuminating the Dark Side.

Thursday, September 25, 2014
The Caledonian Club
9A Halkin Street, Belgravia
London SW1X 7DR 

In the morning session, Dr. Robert Hogan will share his perspective on his widely used personality instrument, the Hogan Development Survey, looking at how humans can use their Dark Side for personal gains. Making the link between personality and decision making, the session will conclude with an examination of how his new assessment, Hogan Decisions Style Model can highlight an individual’s post decision biases and capacity to achieve good judgment.

In the afternoon session, Andrew Munro will give an expert user’s perspective on the Dark Side, focussing on strategic leadership and business decision-making. He will also contend why we must get over our obsession with personality assessment and address the dynamics of context, individual and situational factors.

For more information or to register, email admin@psychometricsforum.org.

In the seventh installment of our video series, Corporate Solutions Consultant Jennifer Lowe discusses whether work life balance is dead, the potential consequences of blurring the lines between work life and home life, and what companies can do to keep employees productive when they’re working 24/7.

After years lagging behind their marketing colleagues, HR finally embraced the power of data. The question is, what's next? In this episode of our monthly web series Drinks with Hogan, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and HR iconoclast William Tincup discuss the future of personality and HR.

Few would expect to hear the death knoll at work, but 80% of people name their job as the main source of stress - an emotional state of tension that can have long-term negative effects on health.

Studies show that chronic stress can increase people’s chances of experiencing a diagnosable mental or emotional disorder, suffering from depression and anxiety, and having panic attacks.

And it’s not just psychological. Chronic stress is also linked to increases in metabolic syndrome, a collection of signs and symptoms – obesity, high blood pressure, and a larger waist size – that increase the risk of heart disease. Three out of four doctor’s visits are for stress-related ailments or complaints!

Work-related stress can also have an effect on family life. Men and women with greater amounts of stress were more reactive to the normal ups and downs of relationships. Alcohol consumption also has a positive correlation with amount of stress an adult takes home.

All of this could easily be avoided – at least 75% of people said the most stressful aspect of their job is their immediate boss. Find out how your leadership and employees could benefit from a closer examination of work-related stressors in our ebook Stress is Killing You.

Patient safety is a major concern for the medical industry. Although hospitals have advanced systems to monitor and improve patient safety, they largely ignore one of the largest drivers of patient safety: emotional intelligence.

This workshop provides a comprehensive tutorial on three Hogan inventories – Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI); Hogan Development Survey (HDS); and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI). Participants attending both days and successfully completing the workshop will be certified to use the Hogan inventories.

The workshop includes all materials, continental breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. Hogan has contracted with the Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center for a group rate of $153 per night. When booking your accommodations, ask for Hogan’s corporate rate. Please book your room quickly, as it expires July 14, 2014 or when the block is filled.

This program has been approved for 13 (General) recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR, ad GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. This program has also been approved by the International Coach Federation for 13 Continuing Education units.

Extensive research highlights the importance of work engagement – employees’ morale and involvement with work – as determinant of individual and organizational performance. Large-scale studies show that engagement is positively correlated with a wide range of important business outcomes, such as organizational commitment, citizenship, innovation, and team performance, and negatively correlated with turnover intentions, strain, and burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Seibert, Wang, & Courtright, 2011). Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence indicates that higher engagement levels are directly translated into higher business revenues and profits (Harter et al, 2009). These findings have prompted organizations to monitor engagement levels via regular employee surveys. According to Gallup, who surveys millions of employees every year, only 30% of Americans are engaged at work, and the most common reason for disengagement is employees’ direct boss or line manager. Thus leadership is a critical antecedent of engagement (Wollard & Shuck, 2011).

Leadership is typically defined as the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams (Hogan, 2007). As engagement is a key driver of individual-, team-, and unit-level performance, it has been argued that leaders influence organizational effectiveness by engaging employees, or failing to do so (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007). Meta-analyses suggest that leadership effectiveness increases employees’ job satisfaction and commitment (Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002; Fuller, Patterson, Hester, & Stringer, 1996; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996), while independent studies report strong correlations between transformational leadership and employee engagement (Zhu, Avolio, & Walumbwa, 2009), where engagement mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ turnover intentions (Wefaltd et al, 2011). Although these findings support the idea that leadership is a major cause of employee engagement, an important unaddressed questions remains, namely what causes performance differences in leadership?  

To this end, this symposium includes four integrated presentations that highlight the role of leaders’ personality as determinant of subordinates’ engagement levels and discuss how this knowledge can be translated into actionable organizational recommendations.

First, SIOP Fellow Robert Hogan, who pioneered the use of personality assessments in organizational settings, presents a causal model for understanding the relationship between personality, leadership, and engagement. This model posits that personality characteristics drive individual differences in leadership effectiveness because they impact on employee engagement.

Then, Justin Black, Strategic Advisor at Sirota Survey Intelligence, puts Hogan’s model to the test by examining longitudinal effects of managers’ personality on their direct reports’ engagement in a multinational technology firm. Results highlight causal paths between managers’ reputation – how others’ evaluate them – and subordinates’ engagement: prudent and empathic managers engage; passive-aggressive and volatile managers disengage.

Next, Christine Fernandez, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Starwood, discusses linkages between CEO’s competencies, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction in 398 worldwide hotels. Results show strong associations between CEOs interpersonal skills, multisource feedback, employee engagement, and guest loyalty, as well as providing a detailed account on the personality of successful hotel CEOs.

The final presentation, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of I-O Psychology at University College London and VP of Innovation at Hogan, examines the role of managers’ and employees’ emotional intelligence as determinant of employee engagement and job performance in a large retail chain, integrating both top-down and bottom-up perspectives on engagement.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available