You Manage It! 1: Customer-Driven HR Incivility Is a Growing Problem at the Workplace
Incivility at the workplace is on the rise according to a study by researchers presented at a recent American Psychological Association meeting. The Civility in America 2011 survey found that 43 percent of Americans reported that they experience incivility at work. Incivility is defined by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) as seemingly inconsequential and inconsiderate words and deeds that violate conventional workplace conduct. In other words, incivility consists of rude conduct, insults, and bad manners.
Behavioral scientists who study incivility suggest that it is on the rise due to the higher stress levels that employees are experiencing originating from increasingly greater performance demands placed on them by managers. Factors that contribute to employee workplace stress include requirements that employees work longer hours with more to do and with fewer resources. Layoffs and downsizing have contributed to the high pressure on the remaining employees to deliver more productivity along with concerns for job security. Employees who are stressed are more likely to snap and get angry over minor errors made by a team member, or they may say hurtful things about a coworker who they perceive is not pulling his or her weight.
When incivility is allowed to continue unabated it can add up to significant costs to businesses in terms of lost productivity. Researchers Christine Porath and Christine Pearson took a survey of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries and asked how employees react to incivility when they experience it. They found that workers who experience incivility react in the following ways:
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▪ 48 percent decreased their work effort.
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▪ 47 percent intentionally decreased the time spent at work.
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▪ 38 percent decreased the quality of their work.
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▪ 80 percent lost work time worrying about the incident of incivility.
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▪ 63 percent lost work time avoiding the perpetrator of incivility.
Organizations that develop ways to minimize incivility at the workplace can expect to be rewarded with a more highly productive workforce. The question remains, how will this be done and what role will the HR department play?
Critical Thinking Questions
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14-9. Compare and contrast the differences and the similarities between workplace incivility and workplace bullying (the definition of bullying and some examples of it are described in this chapter of the text). Is there a relationship between bullying and incivility? If so, what would it be?
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14-10. Nurses have often reported high frequencies of incidents of incivility when they are working with doctors under stressful conditions in emergency rooms and during surgeries on patients. What effect would these incidents of incivility have on patients receiving medical care at the hospital? What should a hospital administrator do to reduce the high levels of incivility at the hospital when made aware of this problem?
Team Exercise
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14-11. Assume that the human resource management department at a large law firm in a major city such as Chicago has just become aware, based on the results of an anonymous employee survey administered at the law firm, that unacceptably high levels of incivility have been occurring at the law firm. Feedback from the survey suggests that some of the senior law partners at the law firm use profane language and act disrespectfully to law associates and legal support staff who work on law cases under the direction of the senior partners. With a team of 4 or 5 students representing the human resource management department, develop an approach to mitigate the level of incivility at the law firm using your knowledge of effective human resource management practices. Which human resource practices are most likely to remedy the situation so that employees at the law firm can expect to be treated on a civil basis by the senior lawyers? Be prepared to justify the human resource practices that the team recommends when called on by your instructor.
Experiential Exercise: Individual
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14-12. In a situation that is commonly experienced by many recent college graduates, you have just been hired to work for one of the large public accounting firms. You have been assigned to work on a team of accountants performing a financial audit for a large corporation located in a different city, which requires overnight travel with the audit team and intense interactions between the team members at the site of the client. Because you are the newest member of the audit team, the other team members take it upon themselves to tease you and make you the target of their jokes to let off steam in this high-pressure work environment. For example, one of the team members gave you a funny-sounding nickname that you do not like, and you have made this known to the team—yet the others persist on calling you the nickname anyway. After some time had passed and you returned to the office of the accounting firm, you were informed that some team members have been spreading offensive and untrue rumors about your off-duty behavior, and you want these rumors to stop. Is there anything that you can do to improve the level of civility of team members on the audit team?