Managing Today’s Angry Workforce
(Florence M. Stone)

Executive Summary

• Organizations contribute to the anger and violence in the workplace by their demands for more work in less time and a throwaway attitude toward employees.

• The high-stress work environment is causing angry outbursts and violent behavior to grow at epidemic levels.

• Managers need to be sensitive to the levels of stress employees are under, recognize danger signs, and address issues of stress and anxiety before anger evolves into violence.

• Companies need to have recognized protocols and processes for managing all levels of anger in the workplace, including a zero-tolerance policy for threats of violence.

Introduction

Shareholders and board members expect corporate growth, no matter the state of the economy. To make that growth happen, top managements are putting pressure on their workers, using employee cutbacks to increase profits if there aren’t any other ways. The backlash is twofold. Where jobs are plentiful elsewhere, employees leave. If employees are stuck, and are unable to do what is demanded, they react emotionally with endless complaints, angry outbursts, and even fistfights with coworkers.

This may explain why anger in today’s workplaces has grown to epidemic levels. The movie Anger Management, with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson, made hot-headed behavior seem amusing, but in real life it is far from funny. In a recent Gallup poll, two out of every ten employees admitted that within the past six months they were angry enough with a coworker to “hurt” him or her.