You can’t eliminate ostracism experiences in the workplace unless you replace people with robots.

Still, an organization has a ‘duty of care’, i.e. an obligation to provide a workplace that is free of health and safety hazards. To chart your organizational response, start by asking these questions:

1. What do we see as our obligation to our employees?
2. How do we apply our organizational values in this arena?
3. How do we identify ostracism?
4. How effective are our leaders at modelling inclusiveness?
5. What preventive practices can we build into our culture to inhibit/reduce ostracism?
6. What policies do we need to have in place to prevent and deal with ostracism?
7. How can we take effective action, without falling into ‘policing’ or ‘political correctness’?

With behaviours ranging from subtle to blatant, ostracism poses complex organizational challenges. As you now know, new scientific evidence proves that the risk of doing nothing may be more costly to your organization than previously realized.

(PS. For an almost-identical article that was published in the Canadian HR Reporter this week, click here)

 Feel free to contact me anytime.

If you are managing someone who is an abrasive leader, or if you are a manager who was told that you are abrasive – we are always here to help with a (free) perspective or input. 

Scan your environment and you’ll readily see that in your workplace, ostracism can be found everywhere. Specifically, there are four prevalent situations that by their very nature will trigger ostracism experiences:

1. Biased managers. When a manager ‘plays favourites’ or maintains personal friendships with some direct reports, those who are excluded will experience ostracism.

2. Diversity. Those who perceive themselves as ‘different’ often feel rejected or excluded. And sometimes it is a member of a ‘majority’ who feels ostracised. For example, a common complaint I hear when I consult or facilitate training pertains to people speaking a foreign language amongst themselves. The English-speaking person beside them often feels excluded and rejected.

3. Incivility. Every workplace is hampered by some degree of gossip, cliques, skipping of hello’s and thank you’s, rude use of mobile devices and, yes, eye rolling. Despite their seemingly inconsequential nature, these incivilities have serious organizational effects. In a 2011 survey I designed in collaboration with HR Reporter Magazine, 93% of respondents said that incivility impacted on productivity, 79% noted it affected absenteeism and 90% said incivility affected inter-depart­mental collaboration. What the work of Dr. Kipling and his colleagues tells us is that incivility actually hurts, on more than one level.

4. Bullying. When ostracizing behaviours are repetitive, especially if the behaviour is intentional and targeted, it amounts to full blown workplace bullying. The repetitive nature of ostracism in its bullying form can render people physically and psychologically ill, and they’re often unable to work at all. Essentially, bullying is cyberball magnified a million times.

Next week: Great questions for leaders and HR professionals to consider in the ostracism arena.

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

Be honest, admit it. Someone on a team that you belong to was behaving in their usual irritating way. Fed up and annoyed, you looked at another colleague and rolled your eyes. No big deal, just a spontaneous and totally harmless venting of authentic feelings.

But if Dr. Kipling Williams of Purdue University were in the vicinity, he’d be rushing into the scene, eager to study that annoying person’s reactions to your eye rolling. He’d be examining their brain under a Functional MRI machine to check which parts got activated when that person was subjected to your eye rolling. And he’d administer tests to trace your behaviour’s exact impact on that person.

And here’s the fascinating part: Dr. Williams, a leading researcher on Ostracism, will later be able to show you how the person’s dorsal anterior cingulated cortex (dACC) got fully activated in reaction to your eye rolling. If someone banged their finger with a hammer, that’s exact dACC brain area would get fired up.  He’ll relay that the tests demonstrate a statistically significant reduction in that person’s sense of self-worth. Even more interesting, he’ll note a significant drop in the person’s finger temperature. (It is no coincidence that we use terms like “out in the cold” or “receiving the cold shoulder” to describe the experience of rejection.)

In short, research will demonstrate that the experience of ostracism has significant mental and physical health implications.

Next week: Dr. Williams’ fun and compelling experiments on Ostracism (or: if your brain were put under an MRI while you experienced a seemingly inconsequential and exclusion, what would the MRI results show?)

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