In the April 2009 Edition of the Harvard Business Review, lead researchers Porath & Pearson summarize a decade-worth of research on common (and generally tolerated) antisocial behaviour at work.
The behaviours studied include things such as berating bosses, or employees who take credit for others’ work, assign blame, spread rumours or exclude teammates from networks.
To understand the impact of incivility on performance, they polled several thousand managers and employees from a diverse range of U.S. companies and learned that among those on the receiving end:
48% decreased their work effort,
47% decreased their time at work,
38% decreased their work quality,
66% said their performance declined,
80% lost work time worrying about the incident,
63% lost time avoiding the offender
As a manager or colleague, what are YOU doing to stop incivility at work?
And, if you think honestly about your own behaviour: have you personally modeled incivility at work over the last while?
To see more statistics on this topic, go to “The Business Case for a Respectful Workplace” article at http://www.sharonbardavid.com.
Finally, many thanks to my colleague Don Herald who brought these latest stats to my attention!
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