To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. - Arthur Schopenhauer What I-O Folks Are Reading Selections from published articles, articles in press, and other academic sources. Chronic vs. Acute Incivility
In 2009, I transferred from a Talent Management role San Diego, CA to an HR Generalist at a Manufacturing plant just outside of Buffalo, New York. At that time, we were in the middle of a lot of change - Switched 401k providers with reduced investment options, moved from traditional to a high-deductible health plan, and went to a smoking-free environment. All these changes happened within the first couple of months that I arrived. People were working a lot of mandatory overtime at this time too. People were on edge and I saw an increase in the types of incivility behaviors outlined in this post: showing up late to meetings, eye-rolling, crossed-arms, gossiping behind others back, escalating to more serious behaviors, taking off and throwing one's safety glasses at the floor in the direction of their supervisor, etc.
I began thinking about and research things I could do to help ease tension and get everyone back closer to normal. I attended SIOP the following April and attended a session on C.R.E.W. (civility, respect, and engagement at work). It was a good talk, and I walked away with a better understanding of the concept and an idea that I could take back to work and try.
Because we were a manufacturing site, training employees on HR stuff was difficult. We would shut production down 3X a year for preventative maintenance and run an 18 hour Training Day (3 shifts, 8 hours each). I designed, developed, and delivered a training session I titled, Positive Work Behavior, a title Steve Ashworth first coined when he and I were working to implement personality assessment back in the early 2000s ('personality' scared executives back then - i.e., Target).
The training session was simple - I talked about the concept of C.R.E.W. and I shared list of behaviors from 'not so bad' to 'pretty scary'. I had the big Post-it Sticky easel sheets up on the walls on the side of the auditorium (our biggest session was about 100 people). I asked employees to first get up and put a dot next to one of more behaviors they were guilty of during the past 90 days. A little later, I asked the audience to put a different colored dot next to the behaviors they saw others guilty of during the same time period. A lot more dots. Seeing this visually had an effect and seemed to lighten the mood a bit in the room.
We ended the session with everyone taking out their safety card (they carried this with them and whenever a manager saw them doing something safe, they would punch it) and I had them write the worse bad behavior they were guilty of on the back of the card as a reminder. I also asked them to write the same behavior on a sticky note and put into a ballot box before leaving the room.
I tallied the dots I collected from the Post-It Boards and the ballot boxes to establish a baseline. My plan was to do a follow-up in 6 months. I never got the chance to collect Time 2 data, I had left the company slightly before the next training day. However, I got a lot of good feedback from that session, it was one of the more memorable Training days employees said they had. It felt like things were getting better/returning back to normal, but without data, it could've just been wishful thinking.
In 2009, I transferred from a Talent Management role San Diego, CA to an HR Generalist at a Manufacturing plant just outside of Buffalo, New York. At that time, we were in the middle of a lot of change - Switched 401k providers with reduced investment options, moved from traditional to a high-deductible health plan, and went to a smoking-free environment. All these changes happened within the first couple of months that I arrived. People were working a lot of mandatory overtime at this time too. People were on edge and I saw an increase in the types of incivility behaviors outlined in this post: showing up late to meetings, eye-rolling, crossed-arms, gossiping behind others back, escalating to more serious behaviors, taking off and throwing one's safety glasses at the floor in the direction of their supervisor, etc.
I began thinking about and research things I could do to help ease tension and get everyone back closer to normal. I attended SIOP the following April and attended a session on C.R.E.W. (civility, respect, and engagement at work). It was a good talk, and I walked away with a better understanding of the concept and an idea that I could take back to work and try.
Because we were a manufacturing site, training employees on HR stuff was difficult. We would shut production down 3X a year for preventative maintenance and run an 18 hour Training Day (3 shifts, 8 hours each). I designed, developed, and delivered a training session I titled, Positive Work Behavior, a title Steve Ashworth first coined when he and I were working to implement personality assessment back in the early 2000s ('personality' scared executives back then - i.e., Target).
The training session was simple - I talked about the concept of C.R.E.W. and I shared list of behaviors from 'not so bad' to 'pretty scary'. I had the big Post-it Sticky easel sheets up on the walls on the side of the auditorium (our biggest session was about 100 people). I asked employees to first get up and put a dot next to one of more behaviors they were guilty of during the past 90 days. A little later, I asked the audience to put a different colored dot next to the behaviors they saw others guilty of during the same time period. A lot more dots. Seeing this visually had an effect and seemed to lighten the mood a bit in the room.
We ended the session with everyone taking out their safety card (they carried this with them and whenever a manager saw them doing something safe, they would punch it) and I had them write the worse bad behavior they were guilty of on the back of the card as a reminder. I also asked them to write the same behavior on a sticky note and put into a ballot box before leaving the room.
I tallied the dots I collected from the Post-It Boards and the ballot boxes to establish a baseline. My plan was to do a follow-up in 6 months. I never got the chance to collect Time 2 data, I had left the company slightly before the next training day. However, I got a lot of good feedback from that session, it was one of the more memorable Training days employees said they had. It felt like things were getting better/returning back to normal, but without data, it could've just been wishful thinking.