The Incivility Molehill (5)

Ok, so you’re working with the incivil Mirella or Rick. And maybe there’s lots of other incivility hot spots in your workplace.

If you’re a front line employee working in an incivility-saturated workplace with little ability to influence, I’d suggest you polish your CV and take your talent elsewhere.

But if you happen to be a leader with some influence, or an HR or OD professional with some clout, following are a dozen things you can do. (you can find additional details in an article I just published in the HR Reporter magazine. Also, a summary of the previous four blog entries in the form of an HR Reporter article .Feel free to pass it on!)

  1. Before acting, `get the vision’ — become clear on why and how you’ll tackle the problem.
  2. Get all your leaders on board, reading from the same page.
  3. Allot time and resources in advance, and assume it will take more effort than originally planned for.
  4. Rethink your code of conduct and any other relevant policies.
  5. Partner with the union – – together, your chances of creating lasting change are exponentially better.
  6. Get leaders to model the behaviours you want to instill.
  7. Separate ‘personality’ from ‘behaviour’ — people with obnoxious or abrasive personalities can set them free in their private lives. But in the workplace, it’s about courtesy, politeness and consideration.
  8. Create Team Charters, allowing people to define together how they want to treat each other.
  9. Make incivility a topic of conversation and debate, both formally and informally.
  10. Embed incivility into organizational processes, from on-boarding right up to exit interviews.
  11. Provide both leaders and employees with civility-specific training, so that people at all organizational echelons possess hard-core skills for preventing and tackling incivility.
  12. Measure how the changes you’ve made show up in various organizational indicators.

 

Need help with challenges in your organization? Don’t hesitate to contact us

 

This entry was posted in Blog, Harassment, Leadership, Respectful Workplace, Workplace Incivility. Bookmark the permalink.

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