Office Rage Rising

Office rage is on the rise, a new study concludes, with a growing number of workers feeling overworked and underappreciated.

The study, sponsored by Marlin Co., a Connecticut-based management consulting firm, found that nearly a quarter of respondents were “generally at least somewhat angry at work.”

Data for the study was obtained from a 1996 Gallup telephone survey.

According to the study, the most common cause of workplace anger — cited by 11 percent of those questioned — was the actions of supervisors or managers.

Nine percent said co-workers, others not being productive and tight deadlines or a heavy workload were to blame. Others cited dealing with the public and being treated badly as reasons for their anger.

Angry employees can poison the workplace environment, said Donald Gibson, a professor at the Yale University School of Management and a co-author of the study. One upshot, he said, is the tendency to do the minimum amount of work to get by.

Suppressed workplace anger also has been linked to health complaints, including anxiety, depression, high blood pressure and heart disease.

A penny saved

Saving for retirement could soon become easier for workers in small companies.

A new study by Spectrem Group, a financial services research and consulting firm, found that 167,000 companies with fewer than 100 employees are likely to add retirement plans for their workers in the next two years.

At that rate, the new plans would allow nearly 1.6 million additional workers to participate in company-sponsored retirement programs.

The Spectrem study, “Small Business Retirement Services Market,” reports that 1.5 million of the 7.6 million U.S. companies with one to 99 employees offer some type of retirement plan. Of those, 95,000 have two or more plans. The plans have nearly $700 billion in assets and cover 11.5 million workers.

Still, the study says that 70 percent of small companies do not have any type of retirement plan and do not intend to offer one.

Hopper’s lament

Job-hopping can be dangerous to your career.

So says Robert Half International Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif.-based staffing service that surveyed 1,400 chief financial officers.

The survey found that having as many as four jobs in 10 years can have a negative impact on long-term career prospects.

“… Companies look for a pattern of stability in all new hires in order to reduce the risk of turnover,” said Max Messmer, Robert Half chairman and CEO.