Slippery Rock Gazette

Cheryl A. Moore, PsyD

CEO, Prestige Countertops & Services

Have you ever witnessed an individual within your organization being rude, unfair, condescending, slamming doors, being brash, being antagonistic, displaying a lack of disregard for others, or making demeaning remarks?  Perhaps this individual is even you. 

Many individuals are familiar with workplace bullying, but many are unaware that the behaviors I have referenced here are referred to as workplace incivility and are defined as “low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect” (Anderson & Pearson, 1999, pg. 457). These behaviors often transpire through thoughtlessness rather than malice, but as they transgress the policies of cohesiveness of your organization, these behaviors can have a profound effect on co-workers and on the bottom line. 

Various intensities of incivilities are within most organizations, but they are not always formally identified and called out. The targets of these behaviors endure the behaviors and develop their own explanation as to why the perpetrator would behave the way he or she does. By the time the target reaches the point where they report the individual and his or her behavior to a manager or Human Resources, employee morale has decreased and turnover in the organization has increased. 

I have personally experienced employees who are very good at the mechanics of their job, but seem to have a chip on their shoulder and have self-selected to be excluded from the rest of the team. These individuals do not adhere to instructions given, do not like to change their methods, do not associate with others, are not always truthful when directly asked about an error or quality issue and are outright rude and condescending. When an employee like this comes to work and displays a form of incivility within the first twenty-minutes of his or her shift, you now have at least one other individual, if not more, who are going to shut down for the day and not be as productive as they would have been before the incident happened. Worse yet, what happens when this individual is sent to a customer to template a job or perform an install?  Can you trust that this individual does a 360 in the presence of your customer?

We find ourselves in a time where it has become challenging to hire new employees and keep existing employees, and therefore, we have a tendency to want to keep those who are good at the mechanics of the job and overlook the incivilities and rude, brash behaviors. This type of behavior is cancerous throughout an organization. Other workers see this behavior on a daily basis, and it begins to erode their attitude, morale and production levels. Co-workers begin to disrespect management, processes, procedures and each other. Additionally, researchers have shown that workplace incivility has been associated with increased levels of emotional exhaustion, depression, counter-productive work behavior, work-life conflicts, and decreases in motivation and job satisfaction. 

Porath & Pearson (2013) conducted a poll of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries and learned that workers who have been on the receiving end of incivility react in the following ways:

• 48 percent intentionally decreased their work effort.
• 47 percent intentionally decreased their time spent at work.
• 38 percent intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
• 80 percent lost time worrying about the incident.
• 63 percent lost work time avoiding the offender.
• 66 percent said their performance declined.
• 78 percent said their commitment to the organization declined.
• 12 percent said they left their job because of the uncivil treatment.
• 25 percent admitted to taking their frustrations out on customers.

It is important for management to have a good rapport with their workers and have open lines of communication, so these types of behaviors do not go undetected. It is not unusual to have one co-worker make a passing remark about another worker’s behavior that just gets shrugged off at first, but as time passes, several workers are being impacted by the actions of this one individual and the situation starts to escalate. Ultimately, this individual can cost you good, productive workers and starts to impact your bottom line.

An important action for managers to take when it comes to workplace incivility, is to walk the talk and to model good behavior. If a manager disrespects his or her subordinates by yelling, belittling, being condescending, and being unfair, the workers will begin to disrespect the manager and eventually the organization. It’s the old adage that actions speak louder than words. It doesn’t matter what motivational posters are all over the walls or if the employee handbook states that workplace incivility will not be tolerated if the leaders and managers are not acting in ways that are conducive to a cohesive, productive environment.

Another good way to show your employees that incivilities are not acceptable within your organization would be to include a section on this in your employee handbook. List out the behaviors and explain they will not be tolerated and what the repercussion of the offenses will be, just like any other infractions you would include. Additionally, you could make this part of your hiring practices and define and discuss workplace incivilities during your onboarding process.

Lastly, although this is not an exhaustive list of things you can do, make your employees aware of workplace incivilities through your training efforts. The time and investment you put into this should be reflected in your bottom line as moral increases and in turn your production levels increase. 

Workplace incivilities are probably more transparent than workplace bullying behaviors. The transparency comes from the ignorance of the impact of these behaviors and the impression that these are just normal every day behaviors that creep into the workplace. Excuses are given for the behavior, which may work for the first time or two, but are not acceptable when they continue. One important thing to remember is your customers may witness this behavior as well and choose to do business elsewhere, even if the behavior is not directed their way.

References

Anderson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24, 452-471, http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amr.1999.2202131

Porath, C., & Pearson, C. (2013). The Price of Incivility. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility