Yesterday’s Advisor covered calculating the cost of incivility on mental wellness (it’s high) and 6 tips for eliminating incivility. Today, we offer more tips, and we take a look at a broader wellness program.
(Go here for tips 1—6)
7. When Incivility Occurs, Hammer It.
If you ignore incivility, say Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, authors of The Cost of Bad Behavior, it festers. It continues toward the people it started with and expands to other people. Some of Pearson and Porath’s research participants noted that they have stopped using the internal hiring systems at their companies because they have been burned by managers who gave glowing recommendations to uncivil workers just so that the manager could pass the problem off to another department.
Pearson and Porath stress the great importance of civility where employees interact with customers. On Disney properties, they say, reports of incivility are dealt with instantly. “Suits” (security personnel, dressed in business attire) descend out of nowhere, and the employee is gone.
8. Take Complaints Seriously.
It takes a lot of courage for lesser-empowered individuals to lodge a complaint about incivility. They fear not being taken seriously, or worse, being made to feel that they are the ones committing the crime.
To counteract that, employees need to know that you will respect their complaints and take action. Pearson and Porath note that in talking to employees, they have never had any difficulty finding out who are the uncivil members of the staff.
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9. Don’t Make Excuses for Powerful Instigators.
Pearson and Porath have heard lots of excuses for habitual offenders:
“That’s just how Daryl is.”
“We can’t afford to lose Sally.”
“We’re dealing with Rob, but bringing him around in his own time [his own way, in his own style]. That is the best approach to use with him.”
“I don’t like to get involved in employees’ personal matters.”
“Tracy doesn’t mean any harm. He’s just [overworked, having problems at home].”
“I have bigger problems to deal with.”
The cost of cutting loose habitually uncivil employees will never be as much as the outrageous price of keeping them, Pearson and Porath say.
10. Invest in Post-Departure Interviews.
While departing employees often won’t speak up in an exit interview, Pearson and Porath find that they often will open up 6 months later. Give that a try, they suggest.
Pearson and Porath’s tips help with your corporate mental wellness, but how about taking the challenge to the next level with a full-blown wellness program. Well-structured and well-run wellness programs generate ROIs of up to 300 percent—music to management’s ears! But the key words are “well-structured” and “well-run.” Poorly structured programs just spin their wheels—no health benefit and no positive ROI, either.
Many readers have told us that BLR’s comprehensive guidebook, Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI has helped them get programs up and running that achieve wellness objectives with a great ROI, while avoiding the legal hassles that, these days, seem to accompany any worthwhile venture in HR.
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It’s a comprehensive guide that takes you step-by-step through setting up a program, from convincing management all the way through to creating and implementing a workable plan for your workplace. The guide also includes a vast collection of ready-to-use forms, handouts, and checklists that both structure your program and provide the metrics to prove its effectiveness to management’s satisfaction.
If you’d like to examine Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI on a no-cost, no-obligation basis for 30 days, we can arrange for you to do so. Let us know and we’ll be happy to set it up.
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