Fast Facts: The Cost of Incivility
In the United States, an increase in uncivil behavior has resulted in the erosion of workplace morale, leaving employees to deal with hundreds of millions of uncivil interactions every day. This translates into an estimated $2 billion per day loss due to decreased productivity and increased absenteeism, according to a recent thought leadership paper from the Security Executive Council (SEC).
Recent surveys indicate that Americans are seeing more incivility and are increasingly worried about safety and disorder in daily life, according to Beyond Incivility: The Soaring Business Cost of America’s Deteriorating Civility. An estimated 60 percent of workers think society has become uncivil, with almost half of those surveyed reporting having encountered multiple incidents of rude or disrespectful customer behavior during the past year.
Findings from the most recent Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Civility Index show that more than 70 percent of U.S. workers thought their supervisor could have done more to prevent an incident of incivility at work, suggesting widespread dissatisfaction with how companies address rude behavior in the workplace.
“If employees feel incivility goes unchecked, it breeds disengagement and cynicism,” the SEC paper said. “Indeed, two-thirds of workers in one poll said incivility directly reduces productivity, and 59 percent said it lowers morale in their workplace.”
Learn more about the direct and indirect costs of incivility at work in the video below.
