Don’t you hate it when your officemate snaps at you when you first come through the door at work? Your stress level skyrockets, and you feel anger surging. The day can only go from bad to worse, right? How do you respond? Or perhaps you are the one in a bad mood when you arrive at work and find yourself “ready to rumble” when you come through the door. Either way, stressed behavior and rude behavior are linked.

A recent Deloitte survey found that over 40% of employees feel “exhausted” or “stressed” always or often when coming to work. This is consistent with American Psychological Association’s 2023 survey findings: The average U.S. adult experiences a great deal of stress with nearly one-quarter (24%) of U.S. adults rating their average stress levels between 8 and 10, with 10 meaning a “great deal of stress.” This includes C-suite as well. Survey results by Deloitte revealed that 70% of C-suite are seriously considering quitting their current job for one that better supports their well-being. Yet, despite their own struggles, most of the same executives (80%) believe their employees are “thriving” in their well-being. This disconnect can lead employees to think their leaders are not there to support them.

As a result of high stress levels within the organization, people can be more likely to engage in stress-related behaviors such as rudeness and incivility. These negative behaviors can pollute the company culture and how workers perceive one another. In a landscape that’s both interconnected and divided, incivility has become a pervasive issue impacting various aspects of our lives, from personal interactions to public discourse. Many societies around the world have become increasingly polarized in the last several years with voices at the extreme positions on issues garnering the most attention in the news, online and in social media. These trends have led to an increase in uncivil behavior in government, in the workplace and even in families.

Incivility is an impactful yet more subtle stressor that can manifest in these three ways:

1. Interpersonal: These behaviors are what we might typically think of as incivility. They can include: rolling your eyes at a comment, groaning after someone makes a point or demeaning/dismissive comments toward peers or direct reports.
2. Cyber: With the uptick of remote work and online meetings, workers are increasingly interacting via their computer screens. Uncivil behavior can subtly find its way into emails or direct messages, often stemming from frustration or misinterpreting the intent behind the wording.
3. Victimless: Employees can leave the copier/fax machine jammed so that someone else must fix it. Some workers might chronically leave dishes in the sink for someone else to have to clean up. This sends the message (intentional or not) that “my time is more valuable than yours, so you should deal with it.”

These stress-provoking behaviors can lead to an increase in workplace stress, resulting in negative behaviors. If these stressful behaviors aren’t managed, the company culture can become toxic, resulting in demotivated company people who feel disconnected from their work and teams, therefore declining productivity. Lower productivity can decrease company revenue and profitability. Ultimately, workers will “vote with their feet” and leave the organization, which can cost a business even more money and time to replace them.

Learning and development (L&D) leaders are in a unique position in their organizations to help “sound the alarm” for better employee well-being and improved work environments. However, before these departments can educate others in the organization, they must “get their own house in order” by examining how staff members treat one another, and how they can communicate more civilly, especially under stress.

Benefits of Behavioral Training for Employees

There are many benefits to offering trainings like code of conduct and interpersonal skills training to improve how your staff interact with one another. Some examples of potential benefits include:

• Raise awareness: Many individuals are not aware of their stress-related incivility or how they impact others. Training can help employees understand the negative effects of these “seemingly inconsequential behaviors.”
• Improve workplace morale and employee engagement. Workers often spend more of their awake time each day interacting with colleagues as opposed to family members. Keeping a positive workplace environment is an important component of employees’ mental health.
• Create psychological safety. Team members need to feel supported by their supervisors and peers to offer input and creative solutions to problems. Incivility and rudeness can kill creativity and dampen efforts at collaboration.
• Employee retention. Employers that create healthier work environments can better retain their top talent, which can reduce the costs associated with replacing and onboarding new employees.

Components to Behavioral Training

Training on how to be more civil in a specific work environment will vary based on the needs of the workers and the mission of the organization. However, there are some components of training that should be part of any program. These include:

• Stress and its impact. Many uncivil interactions are associated with stress-related negative behaviors. People first need to recognize personal signs of stress and what their own negative behaviors might be. Awareness of self is the first step in a process of change.
• Defining incivility and its manifestations. Participants can benefit from understanding more about uncivil behaviors and how they manifest (e.g., interpersonal, cyber, victimless).
• Motivations for why it is important to change. Ideally, people would want to change these behaviors because “it is the right thing to do.” However, in these days of anger and conflict regarding politics or beliefs, some people may enjoy putting others down. Connecting personal health and quality of life as a motivation to change is often a more impactful foundation for change.
• Skills to change. People can learn about what not to do, but they also need to learn what to do to be more civil in their interactions, especially when others are not. Assertiveness training and emotional intelligence skills can allow employees to learn to respond (not react) to their peers.

How to Measure for Success

Measuring the benefit (or lack thereof) is important when implementing any training program. When creating a program on civility, L&D professionals might think about the following data points to measure success:

• Before and after survey around the training on incivility. Trainers may conduct surveys pre/post training to examine employee knowledge of incivility and its impact.
• Before and after organizational survey about rudeness in the workplace. More and more organizations are conducting employee satisfaction surveys to understand the employee experience in the work environment. Questions could be added to this survey that examine rudeness in the workplace.

Conclusion

Our culture is amidst a surge of rude and uncivil behaviors that are wreaking havoc on our work environments and how our home lives. Employers are faced with the impact of this pandemic of rudeness as employees bring their stress-related negative behaviors to work. L&D professionals can help by offering trainings that educate employees on ways to reduce stress-related uncivil behaviors, thereby creating work environments that foster creativity and innovation.