Workplace toxicity and incivility

The workplace can become a toxic environment if incivility is allowed to fester and eventually become culturally entrenched.

Incivility is a grey area when it comes to being considered a direct workplace infraction as it can be looked at simply as “trouble/conflict at work.” It can be perceived as a general undercurrent within an office, department, or the entire organisation.

However, most progressive organisations have specific and written policy positions that directly address the standard of behaviour between co-workers at the workplace. The standard is one of mutual respect.

It must also be noted that a toxic environment is antithetical to the belief that “good businesses are built on good relationships,” and therefore its existence in the workplace must be properly addressed and managed.

Wherever toxicity or incivility occurs, the receiver or target is often confused and unsure about what is happening the first few times, until a pattern can be discerned.

Incivility, according to Anderson & Pearson, 1999, is “low-intensity deviant behaviour with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect. Uncivil behaviours are characteristically rude and discourteous displays with a lack of regard for others.”

Uncivil behaviour can be overtly or vaguely demonstrated in the form of demeaning jokes or comments, undermining a co-worker, aggression, social exclusion, abusive supervision, discourteous behaviours, interpersonal conflict etc. These actions can occur using direct verbal or nonverbal actions towards a person, group, customer or organisation with behaviours that are disrespectful and distracting.

A toxic environment can make staff depressed and burnt-out. They may be constantly thinking about work troubles or whether someone is subtly trying to undermine them, and living in constant anticipation of the fear and even paranoia that something bad will happen. Someone in such a workplace can be so affected that it reduces their productivity and job satisfaction. The aggrieved or targeted worker could even start to take excessive time off. Harvard Business Review polled 800 managers in 17 different countries on the receiving end of incivility and found:

• 48 per cent intentionally decreased their work effort

• 47 per cent intentionally decreased the time spent at work

• 38 per cent intentionally decreased the quality of their work

• 80 per cent lost work time worrying about the incident

• 63 per cent lost work time avoiding the offender

• 66 per cent said their performance declined

• 78 per cent said their commitment to the organisation declined

• 12 per cent said they left their job because of the uncivil treatment

• 25 per cent admitted to taking their frustration out on customers.

These statistics mean it is inevitable that good people can be unintentionally lost, while the toxic ones remain in the company.

According to the Harvard Business Review, creativity will suffer, performance and team spirit will deteriorate, customers will turn away, and there's a high cost of managing incidents.

In the age of social media, managing negative publicity can also be quite costly.

Managers and business owners should also be mindful that the behaviour of those remaining toxic workers can be replicated, as the other workers deem it as a way of standing up to an aggressor.

A toxic work environment can hamper the organisation’s capability. A bad work culture with underlying disruptions can change the way a company uses its assets, people and processes to transform inputs into results, delivery of services or the uniqueness of a product.

These things are all up for interpretation, of course. What some may see as light-hearted banter might be received as rudeness or impropriety by others.

On the other hand, workplace relational civility is defined as concern for both self and others, interpersonal sensitivity, personal education and kindness towards others. This is categorised as relational decency, culture-driven by emotional intelligence and consistent with workplace norms or company policy. In any given situation, any one of these categories would be able to add positively to the team cohesion.

The culture within a workplace should influence the shaping of polite relationships. A workplace culture attuned to relational readiness will, as a collective, quickly assess a person’s attitude in a negative situation and be able to understand and respond with demonstrated proactive sensibility.

A manager’s role is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a company’s resources, including its human capital. Attempting to make this assessment or internal analysis with respect to workplace relational civility can become a time-consuming task.

Any culture can be changed, and a toxic work environment can be smothered by leadership influences that demonstrate the skilful application of emotional intelligence, supported by reliance on a company policy of civility in the workplace.

This would require management’s ability to apply its disciplinary authority fairly to enforce compliance. Workers should collectively feel they are being treated with procedural and distributive justice.

These are just some ways to mitigate toxicity within the workplace, which must also include building the capacity to manage conflict. This involves training and educational workshops in an effort to improve conflict-management skills. HR should be receptive to such reports and provide support when it occurs.

The key to a civil workplace is to focus on maintaining the right climate by creating and maintaining a healthy, resilient and supportive team.

Conducting post-departure interviews will help gather information on those affected by incivility and help to better understand what is happening and the measures required to change the culture.