Dr. Shashi Naotunna
Senior Lecturer
Department of Business Management
Faculty of Management Studies
Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka
Mr.Gayan Wickremeratne
Senior Group Manager
WNS Global Services (Pvt) Ltd
Ms. P.R.D. Wijesingha
Lecturer
Department of Information Technology
Faculty of Computing
Kotelawala Defence University
Given the prominence to focus areas of anti-discriminative laws, cultural values and moral standards which are prevailing in both national and international contexts, organizations are forced to cultivate a respectful and decent work environment. In responding to the demand, organizations are in an ongoing journey of creating and maintaining an environment with psychological well-being that enhances belongingness, pride and mutual respect for everyone. Consequently, diversity management and inclusivity have become increasingly popular among researchers and management practitioners. Regardless of the efforts and interventions of creating a positive, diverse and inclusive climate in organizations, still, there is research evidence to prove that modern discrimination or exclusion exists and the policies are unenforced as expected. Discriminations of employees which violate inclusivity can take place at any level of the organization.
Investigations reveal that discriminations, mistreatments, or exclusionary behaviours in the workplace are common in interpersonal relationships. The exclusionary behaviours include violence, aggression, sexual harassment, bullying, and incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Also, those exclusionary behaviours are varied from high intensity to low intensity depending on the negative impact of those on individuals and organizations. Given its high intensity and obvious harmful consequences, the high-intensity exclusionary acts such as violence, aggression, and sexual harassment received considerable attention in organizations and thus taking actions actively to evade those. The low-intensity exclusionary behaviours such as ignoring or less caring towards someone has still not received sufficient attention, could be because of the perception that those are not significantly impacting employees’ emotional well-being and effective function of organizations. Low-intensity exclusionary behaviours are known as ‘workplace incivility’ or ‘uncivilized behaviours’ by researchers (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Workplace incivility may also be known as discourteous behaviours, lack of regard, and subtle rude behaviour in the business context. Workplace incivility creates harmful effects for employees and organizations. Thus, understanding those behaviours and taking necessary steps to evade such behaviours are essential to ensure equity, respect and employees’ emotional well-being at work. In this backdrop, our article explains the meaning of workplace incivility, consequences of workplace incivility and discusses the implications to human resource professionals in avoiding workplace incivility in organizations.
Meaning of Workplace Incivility
Workplace incivility is a “low-intensity deviant behaviour in a workplace with ambiguous intent to harm the target, violating the social norm of mutual respect” (Andersson & Pearson, 1999, p. 457). It is worthy of unpacking the contents of the definition of workplace incivility in order to understand its uniqueness. First, workplace incivility does not seem to have considerable harm to the victims or organizations compared to high-intensity deviant behaviours such as aggression, sexual harassment, physical violence, and bullying. Consequently, those uncivil behaviours might not receive considerable attention as much as the above mentioned high-intensity deviant behaviours just because those seem not to be harmful or less harmful at the superficial level. Second, it is unclear that the perpetrator (a person who instigated the uncivil behaviour) initiated uncivil behaviour has a conscious intention to harm the target. For instance, behaviours such as withholding necessary information, freezing out, ignoring or excluding, and persistent attempts to belittle or undermine someone’s work cannot be exactly interpreted as the behaviours instigated by someone purposefully to harm another person. However, it does not mean that the harm will not occur because the perpetrator has no conscious intention to harm the target. Third, workplace incivility involves the violation of the social norm of mutual respect. There is an accepted social norm that the organizational participants should be treated respectfully regardless of their status, educational level, race, or other socially constructed categories. Also, organizations have developed or articulated norms and values such as caring for others, equality, respect that serve as the moral standards to guide the behaviours of individuals. Thus, violations of those norms and values are considered to be uncivil behaviours. Some of the examples for workplace incivility are; not saying ‘please’, ‘thank you’, talking down to others, making demeaning remarks, failure to appreciate others for a job well done, not returning emails or phone calls, disrupting others in meetings, and unwanted verbal comments, actions, or gestures. Succinctly, workplace incivility is a mild deviant behaviour that seems less harmful but can violate dignity and respect at work, leading to a burdensome experience for both individuals and organizations.
Consequences of Workplace Incivility
Workplace incivility is not a new phenomenon in organizations. Coupled with the literary evidence, the facts and figures around incivility paint a compelling view of negative consequences for individuals and organizations. For instance, investigations reveal that nearly 98% of the workforce is impacted by such behaviours.
Most of the employees experience or witness these behaviours in day-to-day life, and there is a tendency to compound little behaviours over time that make a huge impact. Take a scenario of someone is consistently being humiliated by another in an organization. The person might tolerate such behaviours up to a certain extent, but the person might lose his or her patience at one point. He or she might mentally and psychologically get depressed thinking repeatedly about being a victim and accumulate such experience to a level where the victim is becoming a perpetrator.
Further, employees lose their time by worrying about such behaviours. These disruptions may lead to decreased satisfaction, productivity, and quality of the product or service. Correspondingly, employees may cut down their maximum work efforts while taking more time to complete their work tasks leading to increased cost and workplace accidents.
Furthermore, victims may worry about the relationship with perpetrators of such behaviours thinking that “though I suggested a good opinion for the upcoming project, non of my supervisor or colleagues heard me properly, only nasty comments”. Therefore, individuals may take leave without prior approvals leading to an increase in the cost to the organization. It is also common for employees to withhold essential information pretending they do not know about something when they are embarrassed with uncivilized work practices.
Being the victims of workplace incivility, individuals experience negative consequences. Such a blow could result in psychological and physical harm to the individuals, such as anxiety, depression, lower self-esteem, distress, and sleeping problems. Thus, uncivilized work behaviours threaten not only employee well-being but also their spouses and relatives.
Workplace incivility is a prevalent issue in most organizations that creates substantial economic, physical, psychological, and psychosocial consequences for organizations and their employees. However, managers are ill-equipped to detect and address uncivilized work practices because it tends to be more subtle than harassment or bullying. However, there are ways to avoid workplace incivility from organizations, which will be discussed henceforth.
Taking Civility Out of the Box
In this clamorous world, the core job of human resource managers remains unchanged; to win the battle of a talented workforce for civility has never been as important today. Human resource managers need to develop policies and procedures for civilized work practices to perform this core job. It is pretty challenging to understand the behaviours which come under the incivility basket because it is pervasive. We would recommend that HR professionals ensure a collaborative culture that fosters respectful communication and behaviour in everyones’ day to day tasks. In particular, establishing codes of conduct that include civility.
Further, we suggest screening job applicants for indications of psychopathy personalities and behaviours. It is needed to make civility and cooperation a key element in the value system, mission statement, selection criteria, and institutional out¬comes. Also, carefully designed training and programmes will help address the specific devel¬opment areas of workplace ci¬vility practices in organizations. These training programmes would help to communicate all the policies, procedures, code of conduct, and ethics on re¬spect and concern for others. Additionally, being a role mod¬el for respect and dignity should be reinforced continuously with reward and recognition.
The symptoms such as higher attrition rate than the average rate, sick leave, decreased productivity, and employee grievances and complaints pave the way to detect rude and discourteous behaviours. Overall, organizations need to take necessary actions to take civility out of the box. Taking civility out of the box is possible through three practices of ‘know’, ‘feel’, and ‘do’. Know what respect and rudeness are; feel it from the victim’s perspective; Do what makes good for victims. One might only understand the gravity of incivility when dealing with a rude colleague or supervisor. Thus, empathetic awareness is needed to avoid incivility.
We conclude that HR managers or other stakeholders should take actions to elude uncivilized work practices from organizations as suggested above. At the same time, the cognitive development of victims also will be a good remedy for the issue. Therefore, we would like to leave a message for victims of workplace incivility; ‘you can visit an area full of garbage that stinks, but you cannot live there. Stop worrying about the incident and the perpetrator. Leave the garbage bag there and shift to productive avenues to pursue your destination.’