Assessing Civility in your Workplace
Learning without thought is labour lost. Thought without learning is intellectual death.
—Confucius
If you are following the three-step process for starting a civility initiative, you will have already set an end in mind goal (likely related to building a better workplace). Identifying this goal would have required completing some type of general organizational assessment, for example, based on the four conditions outlined in the Civility Culture Compass®. (See Chapter 8 for a sample.)
Hopefully, you have also defined civility, including detailing indicators of what civility looks like in the context of your workplace (these indicators will be used to measure success), so the next step will be to assess civility in your workplace.
What Is a Needs Assessment?
A needs assessment is a systematic exploration of the way things are and the way they should be. These things are usually associated with organizational and/or individual performance1.
The purpose of conducting a needs assessment is to better understand the reason why things are the way they are—rather than the way they should be and how we want them to be. Analyzing the issues and factors that are creating the current situation helps us know what the solution is to get us where we want to be, and where, when, and how we will apply that solution.
Figure 6.1
We often make assumptions about the reason for things being how they are, and this can result in costly mistakes. For example, if we automatically assume that low productivity in a manufacturing context is due to lack of employee competence, we might spend a lot of time and money delivering training, only to discover that the problem was not competence at all. Maybe the problem was, in fact, outdated equipment or internal systems. Given the speed of change and the cost of these mistakes, organizations simply cannot afford to make rash decisions—needs assessment is an effective way to control some of the investment costs of change.
Another key reason we recommend doing an assessment is that if you use the compass and assess the four civility culture conditions, you may, in fact, find that addressing these conditions solves your problem, and you do not need training after all.
Assessment for workplace training may include assessing one or all of the organization (in its entirely or one or more departments, or divisions), the team(s), or the individual(s).
Some Interesting Statistics About Training
One in three workers thinks the time he or she spent in his or her last training session probably would have been better spent elsewhere, according to a survey by Hudson, a staffing and consulting services company.
Among these workers, 12 percent think the training was a complete waste of their time.
Self-improvement was the main reason for participation in training; 68 percent of the respondents said they attended training because they thought it would provide useful, job-related information. Another 28 percent said they were told to go. The last 3 percent went to training to meet people or to get out of the office2.
Trainingindustry.com estimates that:
• Average training expenditures for large companies decreased from $19.7 million in 2018 to $17.7 million in 2019. The number for midsize companies dipped $400,000 to $1.7 million in 2019. Small companies barely increased from $355,731 to $367,490.
• Approximately 75 percent of the global spend for training is in N.A. and Europe. Asia and India, the two most populated regions in the world, combined make up about 17 percent of the global market.
Companies spend about 44 percent of their training related dollars on employees, compared to 49 percent on customers, and 7 percent on suppliers and channel partners. Training is an important part of efforts to reduce workplace injury, illness, and death. In the United States, the total cost of workplace health and training alone is over 100 billion U.S. dollars per year3.
So, after reviewing the preceding statistics, here are some important questions to think about:
1. Would your organization benefit by spending less on training that one in three workers will likely perceive as a waste of time?
2. If planning strategic training in just one to four key competency areas could potentially increase your profitability by 30 percent, would you not want to do that training?
3. If you knew that 67 percent of employees would actively engage in the training indicated in #2, would you not be further inclined to do that training?
4. If you knew you could save time and money by administering one or more quick assessments to identify exactly which of four key competency areas your team needed training in—with little expenditure of time and resources, would you conduct these assessments?
5. If there was evidence that training in one or more of these four key areas could resolve issues related to retention, engagement, and profitability, would you want to engage in this training?
If you answered yes to one or more of the preceding questions, civility training offers a solution to better managing the costs, time requirements, and employee buy-in aspects of workplace training. The next step is completing a needs assessment to identify your training needs.
Benefits of Completing a Needs Assessment
One of the key reasons a needs assessment is completed prior to launching a training plan is to manage resources. Training takes time and money, and so, it just makes sense to have an idea what you are training, why you are training, and who needs the training before you train.
There are many additional benefits to completing a needs assessment; these include increased ability to:
• Focus the training on what is important at a specific time for a specific learner
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of learners
• Identify continuous improvements to current structure
• Fit learning to learner
• Identify a future learning path
• Fit trainer to the need of the leaner
• Identify metrics by which to measure success
• Align gaps in goals
• Build a framework for a training communication plan
• Establish expectations for return on investment
• Asses engagement
• Identify risks
• Build a frame of reference
• Enable priorities for action to be established
• Plan the most effective development of limited resources, for instance, to ensure cost effectiveness and value for money
• Justify investment in training by showing how it will contribute to achieving corporate objectives
• Provide a basis for integrating training into the business by getting line management involvement and commitment
Approach to Workplace Civility Assessment
There are two typical approaches to completing a workplace civility assessment:
1. Help people identify performance issues and consider what skills gaps are causing the issues as well as how planned training can help to solve them.
2. Taking a big picture view of the whole organization. Consider current, present, and future activities and goals, and then develop training plans to meet the identified current and anticipated training needs.
Depending on the outcomes you are looking for, you will choose either #1 or #2. For example, if your primary issue is attrition and your goal is retention, you might consider starting with #2. If your issue is a specific employee or group of employees who are not working well together, you might start with #1.
With civility initiatives, because we can often identify elements of overall workplace culture as causing incivility at work, we typically recommend starting with an organizational culture assessment. Primarily, we are assessing the current situation relative to the four conditions identified as strong influences of successful civility training. These are outlined in the Civility Culture Compass®:
• Change
• Alignment
• Readiness
• Engagement
At Civility Experts Worldwide, we customize these civility condition assessments, and much of this process is proprietary. However, there are some general assessments (mostly paper-based) you can use to get started. Details about the sample assessments listed as follows are included in Chapter 11, Tools You Can Use. There is also additional detail in Chapter 10, Sources and Resources. It is always recommended that you use a combination of several needs assessment methods, including:
• Direct observation
• Questionnaires
• Consultation with persons in key positions and/or with specific knowledge
• Review of relevant literature
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Tests
• Records and report studies
• Work samples
Recommended Assessment Process
While it is understood that identifying a key issue or problem (or more than one) that the organization is looking to address with a civility solution is, in fact, part of assessment, we consider it to be more of an awareness raising exercise for the organization. However, the data collected in completing this prework is used to inform the next steps, which we consider to be the formal assessment.
Assessment Process Phase 1: Complete a general organizational culture assessment—Start by asking the questions outlined for each of the four conditions of the compass, as outlined in Chapter 5. And then, if you do not have enough information to move forward, do additional organizational culture assessment.
Sample General Workplace Culture Assessments
• Civility Culture Compass® General Assessment4
• The Denison Organizational Culture Survey5
• Organizational Health Index6
• Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument7
Assessment Process Phase 2: After you are able to establish how ideal the current situation is for each of the four conditions, try to identify aspects of any less than ideal conditions that you can adjust. This is achieved through administering additional, targeted assessments—specific to one or more of those four conditions: readiness, change, alignment, and engagement.
Alignment
Some strong indicators of potential misalignment between current organizational processes, workplace culture, and so on, a culture of civility, include: team conflict, quantity of miscommunications, bullying claims, low morale, low retention, and accountability issues.
• Organizational Values Assessment Tool8
• Civility Symptoms Survey® Civility Experts Worldwide9
• Clark and Landrum Civility Scale® Cindy Clark/Eric Landrum Boise State University10
• Ranson Civility Quotient11
• Civility Norms Questionnaire12
• Positive Culture Assessment13
Please see additional information in Chapter 9, Tools You Can Use.
Engagement
There are many indicators of low engagement. Sometimes, it is true that attendance and number of sick days or stress-leave requests seem like obvious signs that people are not engaged. But, these are not always accurate, for example, there may be legitimate physical or psychological reasons a person is not coming to work. Because we understand engagement to mean employees are actively choosing to contribute in a positive way beyond their basic job requirements, we find a stronger indicator of engagement is the overall level of trust. This is because high levels of trust typically correlate with employees stating that:
• They feel valued as individuals
• They feel their contribution has value
• They feel that they are treated fairly
• They feel they are compensated fairly
• They feel empowered to self-direct and/or make decisions
• They have a sense of shared purpose
• They feel they can overcome workplace challenges
• They feel supported
• They are happy at work
When the preceding are perceived, people are more likely to perform well and to exhibit positive, respectful behaviors.
Sample Engagement Assessments
• Happiness at Work Survey14
• Franklin Covey Trust Quotient15
• Organizational Trust and Engagement Index 16
• Gallup Q12 Engagement Survey17
Change
One strong indicator of that change in a workplace that could be inhibiting respectful behavior is the degree of hardiness—hardiness references the physical and/or “bounce-back” from stress and change. Hardiness fosters resilience and resilience of individuals collectively contributes to an organization’s overall adaptive capacity.
• Change Management Readiness Assessment18
• Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool19
• Resilience Assessment20
• Change Resistance Assessment21
Readiness
One strong indicator of readiness is understanding whether learners (employees) are physiologically hardy and whether they feel psychologically safe. When employees do not feel their basic needs are being met, it is not likely they will actively participate in learning, and/or the learning will not transfer to the workplace. As an example, if an employee does not feel safe at work, or if he or she feels underpaid or taken for granted, if he or she is unhealthy because of overwork or lack of breaks, he or she may be consciously or subconsciously focused on figuring out how to get these basic needs met. And, if this basic need is not met, learning—no matter how good training is, will not be a priority. (Please see Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Chart and assessment in Chapter 9, Tools You Can Use.)
• Hierarchy of Needs Self-Test22
• Hardiness Test23
• Workplace Stress Assessment24
• Learning Culture Assessment25
Using Assessment Outcomes
Once we have the outcomes of our assessment, we are going to set a training plan goal and outline some learning objectives. We use a version of SMARTER approach to this goal-setting, specifically we consider:
S—specific; what exactly do you want to be different after the training?
M—measurable; how will you know there has been behavior change? What will you compare the after to?
A—applicable; are you sure these are skills the employees needs to exhibit on the job? For example, do not train just for the sake of training.
R—realistic; can we really teach or train what we need to with the resources available?
T—teachable; are we sure, for example, via assessment, that the identified gaps are based on skill versus will? For example, not so easy to change attitude and attitude is a big part of civility.
E—evaluated; do we have an evaluation plan in place? How will we know we have met our goals? How will we know which aspects worked and which did not?
R—rewarded; what are the benefits to the employee when he or she exhibits this positive behavior? How can you ensure the benefits will be experienced? What are the benefits to the organization? For example, goes to return on investment.
Assessment Process Phase 3: If conditions were not ideal for any of the four factors, we would conduct further assessment in the identified foundational area. We do this to better understand the factors influencing civility in the organization, and we want to have a clearer view of where we can address any or all of these four conditions. In this way, we lay a foundation for success—and then we can start our civility training in one or more of four civility competency areas—this is our discussion in Chapter 7. However, it must be stated that sometimes, once you address the condition—and/or restore one or more of the influencing conditions to ideal status, you could find that the behaviors or issues you set out to address have been resolved. If the symptoms of incivility have been alleviated, it may be that no civility training is actually required.
To recap:
• A needs assessment is a systematic exploration of the way things are and the way they should be. These things are usually associated with organizational and/or individual performance26.
• The purpose of conducting a needs assessment is to better understand the reason why things are the way they are—rather than the way they should be and how we want them to be. Analyzing the issues and factors that are creating the current situation helps us know what the solution is to get us where we want to be, and where, when, and how we will apply that solution.
• One of the key reasons a needs assessment is completed prior to launching a training plan is to manage resources.
• There are two typical approaches to completing a workplace civility assessment:
1. Help people identify performance issues and consider what skills gaps are causing the issues as well as how planned training can help to solve them.
2. Taking a big picture view of the whole organization. Consider current, present, and future activities and goals, and then develop training plans to meet the identified current and anticipated training needs.
• The recommended assessment process is:
Phase 1: Complete a general organizational culture assessment.
Phase 2: If general organizational culture assessment identifies issues related to incivility, administer assessments to identify which one or more of the four civility culture conditions: readiness, change, alignment, and engagement, is not ideal.
Phase 3: When one or more of the four civility culture conditions has been identified as not ideal, conduct further targeted assessments in that specific foundational area.
• One of the ways the compass can save organizations’ time and money is because sometimes once the influencing conditions are restored to ideal, the incivility symptom is resolved and no training is necessary.
Test Yourself
1. What is not a part of SMARTER goal setting?
a. Specific
b. Measurable
c. Artistic
d. Teachable
2. What is step one of the assessment procedure?
a. Complete a financial report to see if the company can afford this assessment
b. Complete a general organizational culture assessment
c. Complete an IQ assessment of all employees
d. All of the above
3. How do employees express that they are in a high trust workplace?
a. They feel empowered
b. They have a shared sense of purpose
c. They feel empowered to make decisions
d. All of the above
1 http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rouda/T1_HRD.html
2 Katherine Walsh, “Time in Training Often Wasted,” CIO (CIO, March 15, 2006), http://www.cio.com/article/2447352/training/time-in-training-often-wasted.html.
3 “The Effectiveness of Workplace Training,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), http://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2010/01/29/training/
4 Civility Experts Worldwide - Winnipeg Manitoba Canada, June 25, 2020, https://civilityexperts.com/
5 Denison Consulting, “Organizational Culture in the Gig Economy,” Denison Consulting (Denison Consulting, February 16, 2017), https://denisonconsulting.com/organizational-culture-in-the-gig-economy/
6 “Solutions,” McKinsey and Company, http://www.mckinseysolutions.com/
7 “Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument Online,” Home | OCAI online, http://ocai-online.com/
8 http://careleaders.com/assessment/valuesAssessment.html
9 “Assessments: Civility in the Workplace,” Civility Experts Worldwide - Winnipeg Manitoba Canada, February 24, 2019, https://www.civilityexperts.com/training-solutions/assessments-civility-in-the-workplace/.
10 College of Health Sciences, “College of Health Sciences,” College of Health Sciences, June 11, 2020, http://hs.boisestate.edu/civilitymatters/research-instr.htm.
11 “Home - Stop Bullying Tool,” Kit, http://stopbullyingtoolkit.org/Civility-Quotient-Assessment.pdf.
12 Ibid.
13 “Surveys,” Iedex, February 13, 2017, https://iedex.com.au/products/surveys/
14 Happiness at Work Survey, accessed July 5, 2020, https://app.fridaypulse.com/help-center/getting-started.
15 “Trust Quotient Assessment: Trusted Advisor,” Trusted Advisor Associates - Training, Workshops, Trust Education, September 28, 2011, https://trustedadvisor.com/our-services/trust-analysis-and-measurement/trust-quotient-assessment.
16 “Speed of Trust Measurement Tools,” The Speed of Trust, https://www.speedoftrust.com/speed-of-trust-measurement-tools.
17 “Gallup Employee Engagement Center,” Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement Center, https://q12.gallup.com/public/en-us/Features.
18 Tim Creasey, “When Should You Use a Change Management Readiness Assessment?,” Prosci, http://change-management.com/tutorial-change-management-assessments.htm.
19 http://peecworks.org/peec/peec_inst/01795CC4-001D0211.52/M. percent-20Casey percent20Org. percent20Capacity percent20Assessment percent20Tool percent20 percent28paper percent20version percent29.pdf.
20 “Resilience Assessment,” Resilience Alliance - Resilience Assessment, https://www.resalliance.org/resilience-assessment.
21 Change Resistance Scale, “Conner Partners,” 2011. http://connerpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Change-Resistance-Scale.pdf.
22 “Leadership and Management Training - BusinessBalls.com,” Leadership and Management Training - BusinessBalls.com, http://www.businessballs.com/. issues or damages arising from the use of this tool.
23 “Hardiness Test,” Welcome to Queendom! Would you like to learn more about yourself? You’ve come to the right place!, http://www.queendom.com/tests/access_page/index.htm?idRegTest=700
24 “Self-Assessment,” The American Institute of Stress, June 16, 2020, http://www.stress.org/self-assessment/
25 “Assessing Your Organization’s Learning Culture,” Learning to be great, http://www.learningtobegreat.com/assessing-your-organizations-learning-culture
26 http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rouda/T1_HRD.html