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!)
- Before acting, `get the vision’ — become clear on why and how you’ll tackle the problem.
- Get all your leaders on board, reading from the same page.
- Allot time and resources in advance, and assume it will take more effort than originally planned for.
- Rethink your code of conduct and any other relevant policies.
- Partner with the union – – together, your chances of creating lasting change are exponentially better.
- Get leaders to model the behaviours you want to instill.
- 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.
- Create Team Charters, allowing people to define together how they want to treat each other.
- Make incivility a topic of conversation and debate, both formally and informally.
- Embed incivility into organizational processes, from on-boarding right up to exit interviews.
- 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.
- 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.