Don't Overlook Your Human Capital

Most businesses are so intensely focused on developing new revenues, leaders and managers typically overlook a hidden corrosive that will cost plenty if left unaddressed.

Aggression is valued in sales teams—and why not? Sales really isn’t for “sissies” or the faint-hearted; it’s demanding, vigorous work.

But there’s a danger in becoming a workplace culture so reverent of aggression that it tips into tolerating or even encouraging uncivil behaviors.

Low-intensity incivility ranges from stealing someone’s food out of the break-room fridge to leaving shared work areas untidy and depleted of supplies. High-intensity acts include sending nasty e-mails, hogging credit, or yelling at and publicly humiliating colleagues and subordinates.

Intentional or not, incivility exacts a huge toll: authors Christine Pearson and Christine Porath (The Costs of Bad Behavior) state rudeness is on the rise and estimate the tab at $300 billion/year for U.S. employers in expenses related to lost time, lowered morale/productivity, and employees fleeing a toxic workplace.

Fact: Chronic offenders will alienate other employees. Teams need trust (“psychological safety”) in order to learn and to reach peak collaborative skills, and offenders kill this, especially if they’re team leaders. Coping behaviors can include avoiding the offender; withholding effort, help, or information; or sabotaging the organization for tolerating the offender.

Fact: Witnesses to rude behavior register the same physiological stress reactions as targets, and few customers will continue to do business with an organization that permits rude behaviors, even from their high achievers.

Fact: Employees who are habitually targeted by rude behaviors will leave, and the costs of replacing them are high, to say nothing of the relationships and networks that leave with them. Pearson & Porath’s formula for quantifying this: 150% the annual salary of a low-ranking employee; 250% the salary of middle management; and as high as 400% the salary of upper management.