"The price of incivility [at work]"

http://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility/ar/1

This builds on our past discussion on stress and health. These authors suggest that a disrespectful culture at work (often promulgated by a manager, who learned it from his boss, and so on and so forth...) can infect an entire dept of previously nice people, and cause health issues. We follow our leaders, right?

And here are the costs to employers and the economy: intentionally lower effort/output/creativity, reduced productivity worrying about the issue, complaining, and avoiding the culprit, HR costs of turnover (firings, recruiting costs, etc. can be $10K's per head), taking frustrations out on customers/clients, and of course the intangible reduction in team spirit and camaraderie. The effects of bad behavior may eat up 13% of a manager's time, which is also $10K's of costs per head. Cisco (generally regarded as a good place to work) did a conservative analysis and the total ran up to $12M/year. This led them to start a global workplace civility program. But of course many employers don't, and even pretend the issue isn't there. Maybe they will send out some BS employee satisfaction survey, but not act on the responses. That is even more demoralizing.

Simple fixes for bosses (though problem bosses are unlikely to try): walk the talk, show appreciation (so feedback is not always negative), ASK for feedback in a way that the worker is protected and comfortable to be honest, and change hiring/training practices to encourage civil behavior and keep out jerks (but of course asshole bosses may hire assholes who are like them). Also everyone is responsible to speak out when they see bad behavior, but often we keep our heads down for fear of retaliation. Changing culture takes time (if it ever happens), but when people see the "right way" to behave and people getting rewarded for it, they may follow. And similarly, bad apples have to be called out just like any other form of underperformance - even if the culprits are your rainmakers. In this sense, a jerk can be even more costly to your org than an underperformer, because at least others can cover for a slacker. A jerk often affects everyone, and in hard-to-measure ways.

Lastly, monitor that things are getting better (or if not, why?). Google does this fairly successfully with its manager metrics program where they have gotten horrible bosses to improve, but of course they are more data-driven and cutting-edge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0