Civility in the Workplace (part 3 of 3) The Benefits and Results of an organization who insists on Civility in the Workplace

Written by: Lorraine Twombly

Published: October 2010

The last newsletter I wrote about was what it looks like when companies insist that part of each employee's job is to be civil and respectful in the workplace. The following were the key points from in the abridged version from the last article:

• Insist as a leader that your company will focus on civility in the workplace.
• Create expectations on what you expect on the topic of civility in the workplace and encourage participation from others to set standards of behaviors or ground rules.
• Coach others through the process of learning and development.
• Follow up and document through your performance management system or make it a "must" in the process itself.
• Be consistent and tackle issues immediately to help eliminate stressful and unwarranted incivility in the workplace.
• Finally and most importantly, model and demonstrate the behavior of civility yourself.  There is nothing more important these days than great leadership and everyone is watching.  This quality is demonstrated by great leaders routinely. 

This month I'd like to write about the benefits that come from insisting that your company be civil and respectful toward employees. Consider this:  Lots of people in the workforce smiling while doing their work, people there offer to help others when times get very busy with more demand, turnover is low because everyone loves the company they work for even though they have a job that may not be the best fit but know there's growth potential to strive for, and on and on we can go with very positive results for success for everyone and everything concerned.  These results and benefits are a given because the employees feel like their contribution to the working world counts and they are appreciated for the good work they are doing.  Even the lowest paid employee will appreciate everything they get because the organization is a civilized environment to work in more than just the obvious places...in its relationships and communication practices.

When you insist on civility in the workplace, your company will:

• Be a workplace that has happy faces walking around, working efficiently with great care toward giving feedback that is focused on each issue at hand.
• Have a significance reduction in turnover, which in turn will a lot of save time and money.
• Considerable reduction in talking behind people's backs or undermining or manipulating ways to sabotage or derail projects and/or workflow, which saves tons of money, no matter how trivial it may seem. 
• People will be working to higher efforts and energy and focusing on what’s best for the company or organization, which will save (again) lots of money in wasted time.

So, do you think this is a hard challenge to pursue?  I’d love to hear from you about this...please do not hesitate to contact me!

Lorraine Twombly