1 in 5 UK workers have quit a job over a bad boss

Key Points

How many people quit their jobs because of a bad manager? (19% have left, 41% have considered it)
What do employees say bad managers do most often? (Reward favourites, claim others' wins, change expectations midstream)
Do bad managers face consequences at work? (48% are promoted or left in place; only 6% improve)
Do employees feel safe reporting a bad boss? (54% see it as risky or unsafe)

Nearly one in five professionals have resigned from a job because of poor management, according to a new survey from career resources firm LiveCareer.

The findings are based on a survey LiveCareer conducted in March 2026, collecting responses from 1,000 employed professionals across the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Respondents answered a mix of single-selection and multiple-choice questions about their experiences with management, the outcomes of toxic leadership and perceptions of workplace accountability.

The company’s Bad Bosses Report found that 19% of employees have already left a role because of a bad manager, while a further 41% said they had seriously considered doing so. Combined, that means 60% of respondents have either quit or thought about quitting because of their boss.

LiveCareer said the findings point to a “deepening leadership crisis” affecting team performance and staff retention. The report described poor management as no longer an isolated problem but a common and often unavoidable feature of the modern workplace.

According to the survey, more than three-quarters of employees (76%) believe bad managers are a common fixture, or even unavoidable, in today’s workplaces. When asked how common bad managers are, 73% said common, 24% said rare and 3% said unavoidable.

Not all bosses are horrible

The report also found that personal experience did not always reflect this wider perception. Just under half of respondents (49%) rated the managers they had worked with over their careers as good, while 39% described them as mixed and 12% as poor.

LiveCareer said that even employees with generally positive experiences still viewed toxic leadership as widespread.

On the specific behaviours involved, the survey found that employees more often pointed to a lack of integrity than to poor technical skills.

The most commonly experienced behaviour was rewarding favourites, reported by 36% of respondents, followed by claiming others’ wins (30%), changing expectations midstream (26%), dodging responsibility (20%) and controlling every detail (19%).

What bosses get wrong

Other behaviours employees said they had personally experienced included shrugging off burnout (19%), humiliating people publicly (18%), managers not knowing what they were doing (18%), running everything as a fire drill (16%) and making the workplace feel hostile or unsafe (15%).

The report linked poor management to a range of negative outcomes for teams. The most commonly cited was conflict and tension within the team, reported by 52% of respondents, followed by high turnover (41%), poor performance and missed goals (35%), declining mental health through stress or anxiety (34%) and low trust or low psychological safety (33%).

Respondents also pointed to disengagement or “quiet quitting” (30%), burnout and exhaustion (27%) and career stagnation (22%) as outcomes of bad management. Nine percent reported none of these effects.

The survey found that many employees did not feel able to raise concerns formally. More than half (54%) said they viewed reporting or escalating a bad manager to HR as risky or unsafe for their careers, while 46% said they felt safe doing so.

LiveCareer also reported that bad managers rarely faced consequences. Almost half (48%) were either promoted despite poor leadership or left in place without action, the survey found. Asked what most often happens to bad managers, 26% of respondents said they get promoted anyway, 22% said they are moved laterally and another 22% said nothing changes and they stay in place. A further 15% said such managers eventually leave on their own, 9% said they are fired and only 6% said they improve through coaching, training or warnings.

The report described the tolerance of high-performing but toxic managers as widespread. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) said it was likely that such a manager would be tolerated in the workplace, while 34% said it was unlikely.

LiveCareer said the results showed that, until organisations stopped protecting toxic managers and started prioritising accountability, team conflict and high turnover would persist.