The High Cost of Incivility at Work
Workplaces have become less civil spaces than they once were. People don’t say please and thank you. Employees send e-mails and texts during meetings, ignoring the speaker and tuning out of the discussion. Others take too much credit for collaborative work.
The nasty looks and belittling comments reached a point at law firm Bryan Cave, in Irvine, California, that the partners held a civility workshop.
Managing partner Stuart Price says working together toward a common goal set the right tone for the workshop, as the employees set up a code of civil behavior. The firm has the 10 points of the code displayed on a granite block in the lobby.
“The first step for us along the way is to address it with the person, privately, just talk about what happened,” he said. “If the pattern continues with that specific person, we will have further conversations and if it’s particularly problematic, we might terminate them.”
A culture of civility helps employees feel safer, happier and better, said Georgetown University management professor Christine Porath.
“I thought I found my dream job after my graduating from college,” she said. “When I took the full-time job, I learned that it was a very toxic culture. The top leaders had a bad behavior, narcissism. And they had a tendency to belittle and demean people in front of others.”
Then it became clear to her the negative effect incivility had on people.
“It was contagious, too,” she said. “It affected their performance and motivation and mood throughout the day, but they took that into their relationships with others; clients, customers and that kind of thing. It was hurting employees, not only their work life, but they were taking it home with them.”
Porath notes that civility has been declining for years.
“When I started studying it in about 1998, it was less than 25 percent (people) were affected by this on a weekly basis, and those numbers most recently hovered over 50 percent — meaning more people are experiencing or witnessing disrespectful, rude behavior in the workplace these days.”
She conducted surveys, asking people “Why are you uncivil?”
“Over 60 percent of people say, ‘Because I’m overwhelmed or stressed.’ People are asked to do more with less resources. The other thing is technology. The fact that people communicate so often now with e-mails and other forms of technology, it makes being civil tougher. So typically there are more misunderstandings with technological communication,” she said.
