It’s tough being a boss, you’re under a lot of pressure and your employees might not know how hard it is you’re working to keep the company afloat. But judging by the responses to a recent survey, a lot of those employees also reckon they could do a better job!

A survey of 500 UK employees, conducted by bgo.com, saw 60% of respondents saying that they would do a better job than their boss at managing their area of business.

The answers came from across multiple sectors and varying levels of management with an upward trend where the majority of managers who were high up in the company believing themselves better than their boss. A few interesting statistics that came out of the survey were.

• 60% of millennials (21-34-year olds) believed they could do a better job than their boss.
• 70% of department heads said they could be a better manager than their supervisor.
• 83% of responders in the Construction industry also believed they would be better than their boss.

The higher up the managerial ladder the responder was, the more likely they were to believe that they would be better suited to being a boss –70% of department heads said that they would be a better choice. The industry that had the highest number of respondents claim to be able to beat their boss was those in the construction industry, with 83% feeling up to the task of being in charge.

In retail 68% of employees asked were confident about taking the reins from their supervisors, with IT employees following closely behind, 66% in this sector said they could do it better.

But why might an employee feel that they’re better than their boss?

It’s likely because they simply aren’t aware of everything you have to do for the company, this lack of awareness translates into a lack of faith in what you’re doing and could lead to a toxic work environment. The best ways to address this would be:

• To make sure they get a promotion, being promoted through the ranks of a business will expose them to new activities and tasks to make them aware of all the additional duties their manager will have to experience.
• Open communication, making sure the employee knows how hard their manager’s job is and what skills they need to really shine
• Make it known that you appreciate the work the employee is doing – if an employee feels their boss isn’t appreciating their work, they may well feel that their management is poor and feel less respectful.

The most important thing to remember is that, to ensure employee retention, these problems need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Communication is the key.