Each episode follows a person in a high management position at a major business who poses as an entry-level employee to find faults in the company.

They spend approximately one week undercover, working in various areas of the company's operations, with a different job and in most cases a different location each day.

At the end of their week undercover, the boss returns to their true identity and requests the employees he worked with individually to corporate headquarters.

Stephen Lambert says he got the idea for the show after hearing suggestions that Willie Walsh, boss of British Airways, might have been able to avoid the problems of the difficult opening of Heathrow airport's Terminal 5 in 2008, if he had worked anonymously and experienced the basic functions of the workplace.

[6] A second series was commissioned and was aired in 2010 featuring seven episodes, six with new companies and a return visit to the business where it all started to see what impact the show had in the longer term.