Workplace Incivility

Workplace Incivility
Workplace Incivility: A Silent Epidemic

Incivility
• Incivility is a general term for social
behaviour lacking in civility or good
manners, on a scale from rudeness or lack of
respect for elders, to vandalism and
hooliganism, through public drunkenness and
threatening behaviour.
• The word "incivility" is derived from the
Latin incivilis, meaning “not of a citizen”.

• Workplace incivility: defined as a form of
organizational deviance characterized by
low-intensity behaviours that violate
respectful workplace norms, appearing
vague as to intent to harm.”

• Incivility is distinct from violence
Examples include:
• Insulting comments
• Not giving credit where due
• Spreading false rumours
• Social isolation
• Bad manners

Insulting comments
Not giving credit where due
Spreading false rumours

Social Isolation
Bad Manners

Uncivil Communication
• Civil behaviour requires that people
communicate with respect, restraint, and
responsibility, and uncivil communication
occurs when people fail to do so.

• Communication competence "involves the
ability to communicate in such a way that:
• (1) the truth claim of an utterance is shared by
both speaker and hearer;
• (2) the hearer is led to understand and accept the
speaker’s intention; and
• (3) the speaker adapts to the hearer’s world view.”
• If people disagree about the truth or
appropriateness of their interaction, conflict will
occur.

• According to Habermas, we should establish
communicative norms that lead to rational
conversations by creating the social
coordination needed for interactants to pursue
their goals while recognizing the truth or
appropriateness of their interaction.

• Such norms, or social rules, include: "all
participants must be allowed to speak freely,
all participants must be allowed to speak for
themselves (to enable them to establish their
own ethos or "selfhood"), and that
communication should be equal, with no one
participant commanding more attention from
the others than is afforded to them on their
turn."

all participants must be allowed to speak
freely

• Some examples of uncivil communication
include rude gestures, vulgar language,
interrupting, and loudly having private
discussions in public spaces.
• Recent poll data suggests that uncivil
communication is a serious problem, and
believe it has led to an increase in physical
violence.

Rude Gestures

Loudly Having Private Discussions In Public
Spaces

• Workplace incivility has been defined as low-
intensity deviant behaviour with ambiguous
intent to harm the target.
• Uncivil behaviours are characteristically rude
and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard
for others.

Covert examples
Examples at the more subtle end of the
spectrum include:
• asking for input and then ignoring it
• "forgetting" to share credit for a collaborative
work
• giving someone a "dirty look"
• interrupting others
• not listening

Covert examples
• side conversations during a formal business
meeting/presentation
• speaking with a condescending tone
• waiting impatiently over someone's desk to
gain their attention

waiting impatiently over someone's desk to gain
their attention

Overt examples
• Somewhere between the extremes are
numerous everyday examples of workplace
rudeness and impropriety including:
• disrespecting workers by comments, gestures or
proven behaviours (hostility) based on
characteristics such as their race, religion,
gender, etc. This is considered workplace
discrimination.
• disrupting meetings

Overt examples
• emotional put-downs
• giving dirty looks or other negative eye contact
(i.e. "hawk eyes" considered to be threatening
in the culture of the United States)
• giving public reprimands

Overt examples
• Giving The Silent Treatment
• Insulting Others
• Making Accusations About Professional Competence
• Not Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due
• Overruling Decisions Without Giving A Reason

Overt examples
• Sending A Nasty And Demeaning Note (Hate
Mail)
• Talking About Someone Behind His Or Her
Back
• Undermining Credibility In Front Of Others
• Other Overt Forms Of Incivility Might
Include Emotional Tirades And Losing One's
Temper

Overt examples
Talking About Someone Behind His Or Her
Back
Emotional Tirades
Losing One's Temper

Corporate symptoms of long term
Incivility
• Higher than normal employee turnover.
• A large number of employee grievances and
complaints.
• Lost work time by employees calling in sick.
• Increased consumer complaints.
• Diminished productivity in terms of quality
and quantity of work.

Corporate symptoms of long term Incivility
large number of employee grievances
Higher than normal employee turnover

Corporate symptoms of long term Incivility
Lost work time by employees calling in sick
Diminished Productivity

Corporate Symptoms Of Long Term Incivility
• Cultural and communications barriers.
• Lack of confidence in leadership.
• Inability to adapt effectively to change.
• Lack of individual accountability.
• Lack of respect.

Corporate Symptoms Of Long Term Incivility
Cultural And Communications Barriers Lack Of Confidence In Leadership
Lack Of Individual Accountability

What is Incivility?
• You find yourself walking into work with your
supervisor, and you hold the door open for her. She
breezes through without saying thank you.
• When you get to the break room to have your morning
cup of coffee, you find that the pot is empty—the last
person did not refill the coffeemaker.
• Later, your co-workers all leave for lunch together
while you are in the washroom.
• To top off your day, you receive an email from a co-
worker, demanding that you finish a project—in the
next two hours!

What is Incivility?
• All of these behaviours are examples of
incivility,
• a low intensity deviant behaviour with
ambiguous intent to harm the target, in
violation of workplace norms for mutual
respect and courtesy.

What is Incivility?
• At work, incivility can manifest in three major
ways.
• First, incivility can be interpersonal in nature,
where one person is directly uncivil toward
another person.
• In the above example, your supervisor neglecting
to thank you for holding the door is an example
of interpersonal incivility (whether or not she
actually intended to be uncivil).

What is Incivility?
• Alternately, incivility can manifest as “cyber
incivility.”
• Cyber incivility is uncivil behaviour exhibited
in computer-mediated interactions, including
emails, texts, and social media
communications.
• Examples of this behaviour would be sending
time-sensitive information via email, sending
blunt or terse emails, or not replying to emails
sent by others.

What is Incivility?
• Given the fast-paced, technology-focused
nature of today’s workplace, as well as the
large-scale adoption of smart phones, cyber
incivility is increasingly becoming an
important concern.

What is Incivility?
• Finally, incivility can be “victimless,” in that the
rude behaviour does not immediately impact
another person.
• For example, not refilling the office coffee
machine or printer, or tossing trash next to the
trash can without picking it up are examples of
victimless incivility.
• It does not have an immediate impact on another
person, but it violates norms for courtesy,
nonetheless

Why should we care?
• Workplace incivility may be low in intensity,
but it is quite high in frequency.
• Over the past ten years, research investigating
workplace incivility has estimated that
prevalence rates may be between 75% and
100%, meaning that nearly all employees
have experienced some level of incivility
from their co-workers, supervisors, or
customers/clients.

Why should we care?
• The exceptionally high frequency of
occurrence for incivility is cause for concern
because research has consistently
demonstrated that the effects of incivility can
compound over time.

Why should we care?
• As a result, incivility has been shown to lead to
a host of deleterious effects on employee and
organizational well-being.
• In terms of personal outcomes, co-worker
incivility has been linked to higher levels of
employee burnout, feelings of strain, and
decreased psychological well-being.
• In terms of organizational outcomes, incivility
has been related to employee withdrawal,
decreased satisfaction, and decreased
performance.

Incivility Has Been Shown To Lead To A Host Of
Deleterious Effects

What can we do?
• It is clear that incivility—in its many forms—
can be incredibly harmful to both individual
employees and to their employing
organizations. What, then, should be done to
reduce incivility?
• Research investigating civility interventions
is relatively new, but there are some
recommendations that might be effective in
building a respectful work environment.

What can we do?
• Perhaps one of the most important factors
in maintaining a civil work environment is
to have a strong example set by
management.
• That is, managers should model civil
behaviour, helping create a culture of civility
and respect.

Managers Should Model Civil Behaviour, Helping
Create A Culture Of Civility And Respect

What can we do?
• If managers frequently violate social norms for
courtesy and respect, employees might take
this as a cue that doing so is acceptable, and
begin to be uncivil to each other.
• Managers should realize that they are always
“on,” and should be especially careful when
interacting with employees, whether these
interactions are in-person or via email.
• By setting the tone for the organization,
managers can help create a culture of civility
and respect at all levels of the organization.

What can we do?
• Aside from managers modelling behaviour,
organizations can also make sure that norms
for courtesy and respect are evident to
employees from the recruitment stage.
Recruiters should have the “people skills”
necessary to embody the civility norms of
the organization and set the stage for these
expectations.

Recruiters should have the “people skills”
necessary to embody the civility norms

What can we do?
• During the selection phase, employers can
thoroughly check references for indications
of consistent past rude behaviour, as well as
select on personality traits that might be
related to civil, respectful behaviour.

During the selection phase, employers can
thoroughly check references for indications of
consistent past rude behaviour

What can we do?
• Upon employees entering an organization, on
boarding programs can make civility
expectations clear, and issues related to
interpersonal behaviour can be discussed.
Emphasizing that employees should never
be too busy to be nice should be a priority,
and this should be reiterated throughout the
course of an employee’s career.

On Boarding Programs Can Make Civility
Expectations Clear

What can we do?
• Overall, organizational leadership should take
whatever steps they can to maintain a civil
climate, keeping in mind that promoting
civility can both reduce negative employee
outcomes and increase organizational
effectiveness.

Promoting Civility Can Both Reduce Negative Employee
Outcomes And Increase Organizational Effectiveness

What can we do?
• Maintaining a civil work environment is not
necessarily easy, particularly due to the fast-
paced, often interpersonally disconnected
work environment, where communication is
quick and emails are may be sent without a
thought. However, previous research
indicates that it can be done, and making
efforts toward promoting civility will
certainly pay off in the long-term.

Maintaining a civil work environment is not necessarily easy,
particularly due to the fast-paced, often interpersonally
disconnected work environment

How to Control Incivility at Workplace ?
• Have you considered the potential cost of
workplace incivility at your business ?
• Workplace incivility has been defined as “low
intensity” behaviour that may be
demonstrated through actions such as being
mildly but consistently rude, discourteous or
impolite – or violating workplace norms of
behaviour.

• Incivility can be tough for a manager to spot
because it tends to be more subtle than
workplace bullying, yelling or physical
violence.
• Incivility may present itself as eye-rolling,
interrupting or talking over someone in a
meeting, making dismissive comments, or
speaking disrespectfully while not saying
anything that could cause legal action.

Incivility can be tough for a manager to spot because
it tends to be more subtle than workplace bullying

eye-rolling
Interrupt A Meeting
Speaking Disrespectfully

• Further complicating matters, incivility means
different things to different people, so it can be
easy for a manager to overlook or miss.
• This conduct tends to be less of a black-or-
white issue compared to more blatant forms
of undesirable work conduct such as sexual
harassment, stealing or lying.

• Nonetheless, incivility is just as disruptive to
productivity as more extreme behaviours.
• In fact, it’s been described as the “gateway drug” to
workplace harassment or creation of a hostile work
environment which makes incivility worthy of every
leader’s attention.
• Here’s what workplace incivility may be costing
your company and what you can do to build a
culture of respect and politeness.

Nonetheless, incivility is just as disruptive to
productivity as more extreme behaviours

The Cost of Incivility
• Rudeness chips away at your bottom line if
it goes unchecked.
• Remember, most employees fail to report
incivility because they’re worried about
retribution or being perceived as a complainer.
Instead, they worry in silence and get less
work done.

Remember, most employees fail to report incivility because
they’re worried about retribution or being perceived as a
complainer

• Studies show that an employee who feels
disrespected becomes stressed and is more
likely to:
• Avoid offering new ideas and solutions
• Deliberately decrease their productivity
• Lower the quality of their work
• Avoid offering help

Lower The Quality Of Their Work

• Steer clear of the offender, creating inefficiencies
• Take their frustrations out on customers
• Spend less time at work
• Leave the company
• Perhaps worst of all, when incivility spills into
customer view, it reflects poorly on your
company and makes customers uncomfortable
(and more likely to take their business elsewhere).

Take their frustrations out on customers

Costs of Incivility
• Among workers on the receiving end of
incivility:

Costs of Incivility
• Many managers would say that incivility is wrong,
but not all recognize that it has tangible costs.
Employee feedback that
• 48% intentionally decreased their work effort.
• 47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work.
• 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
• 80% lost work time worrying about the incident.
• 63% lost work time avoiding the offender.
• 66% said that their performance declined.
• 78% said that their commitment to the organization declined.
• 12% said that they left their job because of the uncivil
treatment.
• 25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers

Costs of Incivility
Creativity suffers
• Less Creative and have fewer new ideas if treat rudely
Performance and team spirit deteriorate
• Negative consequences, less likely than others to help
Customers turn away
• Criticizing colleagues, disrespectful behaviour makes
customer uncomfortable
• Regardless of the circumstances, people don’t like to see
others treated badly,
Managing incidents is expensive
• One incident can soak up weeks of attention and effort,
waste of manpower

Costs of Incivility
Creativity Suffers
Team Spirit Deteriorate
Customers turn away

Steps to encourage civility in the
workplace
• If you’ve noticed a general malaise among your
workers, or tensions that seem to be brewing just
beneath the surface, consider whether incivility
among your staff could be the culprit.
• Hoping the problem will go away isn’t a solution.
Without intervention, productivity is sure to suffer.
Turnover will also likely increase.
• Instead, you must proactively address your
workplace culture and take steps to minimize the
instances of rudeness and reinforce respectful,
acceptable behaviour.

Steps to encourage civility in the
workplace
Leaders set the tone, be aware of your actions
• Model good behaviour
• Role model, leader is rude
• Create a culture of respect and express your
appreciation.
• Ask for feedback
• Leadership style
Managing Yourself
• Pay attention to your progress
• Self awareness and set good example and alert people
when rude.

Steps To Encourage Civility In The
Workplace

1. Model Good Behaviour
• You’ve heard it before: Leaders must exhibit
the behaviour they want to see in their
employees.
• When it comes to creating a culture of civility in
the workplace, this means you must police
yourself and always speak politely and
respectfully to everyone.
• No raised voices, no cutting remarks, no door
slamming, no talking over people, no sideways
glances that stop employees in their tracks, no
teasing remarks that sting.

2. Don’t Make Excuses
• If an employee tells you they have a problem
with the way another worker speaks to them,
don’t dismiss their concerns because you don’t
agree with their perception.
• If an employee feels disrespected, it doesn’t
matter what you think. It matters what they think
because it’s bothering them enough to step up and
talk to you. And it’s a sign that there’s a problem
that’s likely to harm productivity.

3. Hold everyone accountable all day,
every day
• Just as with any human habit or trait, people tend to
continue conduct that doesn’t cause them discomfort or
pain. That’s why it’s so important to address disrespectful
behaviour as soon as you notice it or it’s brought to your
attention.
• If you notice Sam interrupting Dana repeatedly in meetings,
it’s time to take him aside, point out what he’s doing,
explain that it’s disrespectful, and encourage him to be more
aware of his meeting conduct.
• Likewise, if Margie excludes a teammate from important
conversations, you must immediately talk to her privately
about how such actions undermine teamwork and
productivity.

Hold Everyone Accountable All Day, Every
Day

3. Hold everyone accountable all day,
every day
• When it comes to corrective actions, assume
the perpetrator isn’t deliberately being
rude.
• Incivility is often the result of thoughtlessness,
stress, unconscious bias or misjudgement of
group norms, and often can be corrected with a
mild reminder.

Hold everyone accountable all day, every
day

4. Define Acceptable Conduct
• Because different departments may have their
own norms of behaviour, it can be helpful to let
your team create a list of what’s acceptable
conduct and what’s not.
• For instance, a hard-charging team of lawyers may be
accustomed to arguing loudly and talking over one
another, while your HR department is more
comfortable when every person takes a turn speaking.

4. Define Acceptable Conduct
• To establish rules of behaviour within your
team, hold a meeting and have everyone agree
on 5 to 10 rules of conduct. This will provide the
foundation for how you all interact. Then,
encourage co-workers to enforce the rules they’ve
established for themselves.
• Each department may be slightly different and
that’s okay, just as long as each team is productive
and contributing to the organization’s mission.

5. Hire and Train for Civility
• One way to build a culture of civility in your
office is to deliberately hire people who show
signs of good manners. As you interview
candidates, pay attention to how they treat
everyone they encounter, from the receptionist to
potential teammates.
• Ask yourself: Does the candidate seem to listen to
questions fully before beginning to answer?
• Does she interrupt or talk over people?
• Does he make cutting remarks about former co-
workers or workplaces?

• If a candidate exhibits such negative behaviour
during the interview, just imagine what their
conduct might be once they’re hired and have
settled in and gotten comfortable.
• Also consider using your personal network to find out
how a job candidate is regarded by former co-workers.
• Toxic employees tend to leave a wake of badly
treated co-workers and subordinates that you can
uncover, but you have to dig past their résumé to
find the information you need to hire for civility.

• It’s also a good idea to incorporate civility
training into your employee development
curriculum.
• That way, you consistently reinforce the
positive behaviours you expect from
employees throughout their tenure with your
company.

Create Group Norms
• Work in the group to discuss what should and should
not do
• e.g. Hospital, smile, greet customer to gain customer
satisfaction
Reward good behaviour & Penalize bad behaviour
Motivate the staff with incentives, e.g. bonus and TPM
• Warning, punishing action
• Conduct post-departure interviews
• Interview with resigned staff to find out Root cause

6. Pay Attention to the Larger World
• Current events impact workplace behaviour.
• For instance, when rudeness is displayed by
public figures on television, social media and at
public events, it becomes normalized. Three to
six months later, that incivility tends to bubble up
at work, too.
• You can prevent such negative behaviours from
infecting your business by talking to employees
who seem stressed by a news event, the economy,
overwork or personal situations.

6. Pay Attention to the Larger World
• If you don’t address workplace incivility
swiftly, you’ll likely end up dealing with its
after-effects through turnover, low morale
and productivity gaps. Is that a price you’re
willing to pay?

If you don’t address workplace incivility swiftly, you’ll likely
end up dealing with its after-effects through turnover

Global Approach
• Take civility global. i.e. behaviour and to react
respectfully across cultures
Global Approach
Before you go:
• Know who you are
• Know where you are going
• Be open-minded

Global Approach
Once you’re there:
• Show respect
• Be agreeable
• Show patience with others and yourself
• Pay sharp attention
• Break out of your comfort zone
• Be adaptable
• Accept and learn from mistakes

A Culture Of Civility
• Have a cooperative approach
• Be aware of underlying needs
• Recognize individual differences
• Be open to adapting to positions
• Start from leaders
• Clearly define expectations for how employees treat
each other
• Reward civilized behaviour
• Encourage stress management

Conclusion
• In order to minimize the workplace
incivility, it requires the efforts from both
leaders and employees
• Organizations need to promote the cultures for
civility
• Civility can be enhanced by building
competencies in skills such as listening,
conﬂict resolution, negotiation, dealing with
difficult people, and stress management

In order to minimize the workplace incivility, it
requires the efforts from both leaders and employees

Terminology
• Abusive Supervision
• Abusive supervision is defined as the "subordinates'
perceptions of the extent to which their supervisors
engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and
nonverbal behaviours".
• This could be when supervisors ridicule their employees,
give them the silent treatment, remind them of past failures,
fail to give proper credit, wrongfully assign blame or blow
up in fits of temper.
• It may seem like employees who are abused by their
supervisor will either directly retaliate or withdraw by
quitting the job but in reality many strike out against their
employer by engaging in organizational deviant behaviours.

Counterproductive Work Behaviour
(CWB)
• Counterproductive Work Behaviour
• Counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) is
employee behaviour that goes against the
legitimate interests of an organization.
• These behaviours can harm organizations or
people in organizations including employees and
clients, customers, or patients. It has been
proposed that a person-by-environment
interaction can be utilized to explain a variety of
counterproductive behaviours

Counterproductive Work Behaviour

Kiss Up Kick Down
• Kiss up kick down (or suck up kick down) is
a neologism used to describe the situation
where middle level employees in an
organization are polite and flattering to
superiors but abusive to subordinates

Toxic Workplace
• A toxic workplace is a workplace that is marked by
significant drama and infighting, where personal
battles often harm productivity.
• Toxic workplaces are often considered the result of
toxic employers and/or toxic employees who are
motivated by personal gain (power, money, fame or
special status), use unethical, mean-spirited and
sometimes illegal means to manipulate and annoy those
around them; and whose motives are to maintain or
increase power, money or special status or divert
attention away from their performance shortfalls and
misdeeds.

Workplace Bullying
• Workplace bullying is a persistent pattern of
mistreatment from others in the workplace that
causes either physical or emotional harm.
• It can include such tactics as verbal,
nonverbal, psychological, physical abuse and
humiliation. This type of workplace aggression is
particularly difficult because, unlike the typical
school bully, workplace bullies often operate
within the established rules and policies of their
organization and their society

Civic Virtue
• Civic virtue is the harvesting of habits important
for the success of the community. Closely linked to
the concept of citizenship, civic virtue is often
conceived as the dedication of citizens to the common
welfare of their community even at the cost of their
individual interests.

Folk Devil
• Folk devil is a person or group of people who
are portrayed in folklore or the media as
outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for
crimes or other sorts of social problems;

Social Undermining
• Social undermining is the expression of
negative emotions directed towards a
particular person or negative evaluations of the
person as a way to prevent the person from
achieving their goals.

Yobbo (slang)
• Yob is slang in the United Kingdom for a
loutish, uncultured person.
• In Australia and New Zealand, the word
yobbo is more frequently used, with a similar
although slightly less negative meaning.

Political Incivility
• Political incivility is different from the everyday
incivility. According to face negotiation theory,
politeness norms require us to avoid challenging others,
but political incivility is different because, since it is
specific to the political sphere, contestation of views
and confrontation are required for a democracy to
occur.
• According to Thomas Benson, "Where there is
disagreement, there is a risk of incivility; in many
cases, incivility is itself a tactic in political discourse,
employed as an indicator of sincerity, as the marker
of the high stakes in a disagreement."

Academic Incivility
• In an academic context, incivility can be
broadly defined as student behaviours that
negatively affect the learning environment.

Inappropriate Corporation – Supporting mental
wellbeing in the workplace
https://www.inappropriatecorp.com.au
(Mis)behave with Dave
• The series centres around the team at the fictional
Inappropriate Corporation, a sometimes dysfunctional
workplace with some big workplace mental health issues that
needed addressing.
• Episode 1 – Incivility
• https://youtu.be/AchPlm92qqs

References
• Incivility
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incivility
• Stopping The Downward Spiral Of Workplace Incivility
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/audreymurrell/2018/07/16/stopping-the-downward-
spiral-of-workplace-incivility/#4f1842ef54ef
• The Price of Incivility - Harvard Business Review
• https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility
• What Causes Incivility in the Workplace?
• https://smallbusiness.chron.com/causes-incivility-workplace-10700.html
• Workplace incivility - Wikipedia
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_incivility
• Workplace Incivility and Rudeness Needs to Stop. Here's Why.
• https://hbrascend.org/topics/workplace-incivility-and-rudeness-needs-to-stop-
heres-why/
• 6 ways to combat workplace incivility
• https://www.insperity.com/blog/workplace-incivility/

“Incivility is the social equivalent of CO2 and leads to a sort of cultural
climate change that is very difficult to reverse. Anger, confusion, and a
willingness to engage in bullying to get one's way; these are all results of the
current hot house climate we find ourselves in.”
― Diane Kalen-Sukra,

Workplace Incivility

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