PORTLAND, Ore. (WKBT) — Employees returning to offices after working remotely for months may have picked up rude habits during the pandemic hiatus, according to a new study.
In fact, workplace incivility is rising, and office bickering could spiral out of control if employers don’t handle it properly, according to researchers at Portland State University.
Many folks are just out of practice when interacting with others, they say.
“People have gotten used to not having to engage in interpersonal communication as much and that can take an already distressing or tense situation and exacerbate it because people are out of practice of not having to have difficult conversations,” study co-author Larry Martinez says in a news release from the university.
“These spirals that we’re seeing might be stronger in a post-pandemic world,” says Martinez, an associate professor of industrial-organizational psychology at Portland State.
Some acts of incivility are hard to spot, Martinez says, adding that rudeness can include many things, ranging from criticizing people in public to obnoxious behavior to simply arriving late for a meeting or interrupting a co-worker.
The COVID-19 pandemic made it harder to to spot hostility when communication is only through video chats and emails. Boorishness can go unnoticed when people can’t see remote workers’ body language or hear the tone in their voices.
“Incivility is typically ambiguous and not very intense, but it has harmful effects all the same,” Park says.
Park and Martinez focused on identifying the instigators of uncivil behavior at work and who is less likely to spread disrespect when they encounter it.
Their findings revealed that employees who have more control over their jobs are less likely to react in kind to unkind treatment from others.
Those workers generally have more freedom in deciding how to complete tasks at their jobs. That flexibility often gives them more time to seek out support with hard tasks, mentally and physically detach after a long day, reflect on difficult situations, and even confront hostile co-workers, the researchers say.
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