Workplace Fairness and Dignity
Workplace Fairness and Dignity
To create a positive workplace culture, top leadership must model civility and the expected behaviors.
To create a positive workplace culture, top leadership must model civility and the expected behaviors.
In this episode, I talk about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s behavior toward his staff, as it has come to light. How did he, and how do others get away with abusive behavior for a long time? Enablers are required.
Also discussed, workplace surveys from a variety of sources:
•EVERFI/HR.com Research Institute survey which says 40 percent of employees agree their organization is toxic, and 55 percent agree their leaders aren’t good at preventing problems before they start.
•84 percent of employees that think they have a positive workplace culture, have leadership that live out the company’s values, that is, leadership walks the talk.
•Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) and the Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI) found in their report, The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture, from a 2019 survey that 60 percent of workplace misconduct came from managers; and in the previous 5 years 1 in 5 employees left their job due to a toxic workplace culture. (For more information, visit the SHRM blog https://www.talkworkculture.com/)
Takeaways:
•Abusive workplace behavior is costly to employee health, to business success and profitability.
•The topmost leadership needs to model the behaviors that promote healthy workplace behaviors.
•Create a code of conduct that’s required of everyone. In the workplace people bring their experiences and backgrounds into a new environment, let people know what’s expected of them, and measure them and the organization on these expectations.
Music: New Orleans Country Clarinet Shuffle, John Covert; Landscape, Adrian Berenguer; Oz Funk Full Solo, William Newman; Latin Spanish Salsa Music, Bobby Cole; Smoky Jazz, Bobby Cole; Such a Swingin’ Good Time Neil Cross.
MUSIC: New Orleans Country Clarinet Shuffle, by John Covert
Hi, and welcome to Workplace Fairness and Dignity where I promote the idea of normalizing just that, dignity and fair treatment in the workplace. I am Cecilia Akuffo, the creator and producer for this podcast. Most recently I worked as a staffing recruiter in Human Resources, until I was fired for speaking up about abusive behavior on the job. And so, it is my mission to promote the normalization of workplace fairness and dignity. I will always speak up, I am just not built to do otherwise.
It’s been a couple of months since I last published an episode. You’ll notice some changes on my site.
I now have transcripts accompanying each episode, this will allow for accessibility. Also listed…the music I use in each episode.
The most significant change you’ll notice soon is that I will interview guests … very, soon.
53s. One other thing, I want to highlight is an excellent, informative and inspiring podcast produced by Elizabeth Hart, founder of the organization Tailored for Success, it’s a nonprofit that works with jobseekers in transition. Elizabeth’s podcast is called Pivot Point: Success is a Journey. Pivot Point provides career and personal advice and inspiration for listeners pursuing their own journey for their success. Elizabeth interviewed yours truly on her podcast. The title, Workplace Bullying: Fired for Speaking Up, the episode was posted on March 8th. It was a great conversation, do check out Elizabeth’s organization, and podcast, and our chat!
1:32 MUSIC: Landscape, by Adrian Berenguer
Today’s episode is titled : To create a positive workplace culture, top leadership must model civility and the expected behaviors. In this episode, I will talk about bad actors in the workplace, and provide examples of the leadership that presides over this type of behavior.
Could a conscious company practice of civility change these behaviors? Maybe civility could be codified into a code of conduct. I’ll talk about that too.
2:00 MUSIC: Landscape, by Adrian Berenguer
Many of us have heard about the hot water that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is in for quite a few things, including his administration’s accounting for the number people who died in nursing homes in New York at the height of the pandemic. I’m going to talk about what’s been said about his communication and management style. I’ll stick to things I can talk about.
2:27 Journalist Morgan Pehme wrote in the New York Post about his experience with the Governor’s staff member who called to berate him when he was about to publish a story that could implicate the governor’s administration in graft. Or cheating. The governor’s aide, called the journalist at 4:30 in the morning and “threatened to destroy” his career. Here’s what Pehme said about the experience:
2:50 I remember vividly how I felt: scared. I had no reason to think these were idle threats. I was fully aware of the governor’s volcanic temper and track record of vindictiveness. If he wanted to crush me, he could and likely would.
This was a serious gut check for me. I worried about losing my livelihood, damaging my future, letting down my wife and daughter. But fortunately, I had bosses and colleagues who stood by the quality of our work. So we published the piece, like the press is supposed to do in the face of intimidation.
I’m no hero. The members of the Albany press corps regularly endure abusive calls like I received. And sometimes those calls come from the governor himself.
3:34 MUSIC: Oz Funk Full Solo, by William Newman
3:37 Pehme says that Andrew Cuomo likes “talking tough”, and says Cuomo thinks it’s a virtue. He also says Cuomo’s private abuse works in keeping a lid on negative coverage of his administration. And that’s really what abuse is, it’s an exhibition of power and wielding it over others. What other purpose does it serve other than for the practitioner’s ego?
Another article from the Washington Post is titled: Cuomo’s behavior created ‘hostile, toxic’ workplace culture for decades, former aides say. The article refers to Cuomo’s “aggressive” style. In speaking with 20 of Cuomo’s former aides and advisers they described “a toxic culture” where the governor verbally attacks subordinates. “Some said he seemed to delight in humiliating his employees, particularly in group meetings, and would mock male aides for not being tough enough”.
Two former male aides shared names he called them that won’t be shared on this family-friendly podcast.
4:36 A senior advisor for the governor, Rich Azzopardi, issued a statement that said that he never heard the governor use course language like the former male aides said he did.
Yeah… OK. Who believes that? And that’s why people like Cuomo get away with such behavior for too long. Enablers, defenders, and people who will lie for them. People who adopt his behavior like the aide who called up that journalist with threats at 4:30 in the morning.
5:05 MUSIC: Such A Swingin’ Good Time, by Neil Cross
I’ll end this story with this paragraph from the Post article.
Longtime aides described Cuomo as having a Jekyll and Hyde personality, alternately charming and raging with anger soon after. One person said “You didn’t know which Andrew you were going to get”. Once he yelled at her so loudly that workers checked on her after. She said, it was so over the top, her own parents had never yelled at her like that.
5:32 Cuomo is given credit for having a strong work ethic and working late next to his staff. I think he could be that person without the abuse and disparagement of his staff. A strong work ethic doesn’t counteract decency… … does it?
5:48 You know, you could say, none of this is prove-able. Except people have been saying these things about Cuomo for years, and the large number of people telling the same stories really has to make one think.
Moving on.
5:59 MUSIC: Latin Spanish Salsa, by Bobby Cole
The modern workplace has to change. There are workplaces that do treat their employees with fairness and dignity, but what I’m trying to sound is that this is not the norm. Workplace misconduct and abuse is widespread. You wouldn’t know it from the upbeat LinkedIn articles teaching people how to be great leaders, etc. I suspect there’s a bias in LinkedIn where people who are inclined to manage the right way put themselves out there. I mean, who’s gonna post, ways to be an abusive leader?! But the reality of what happens behind the curtain and within the actual organizations is another story.
6:40 HR.Com’s HR Research Institute and EVERFI collaborated on a survey, and the research between HR.com’s HR Research Institute and EVERI – what they say is, they say “to gain greater insight into toxic workplaces” was the purpose of the survey. EVERFI brands itself as the world’s leading education technology company. The company provides solutions that include for workplace training, includes solutions for higher education, for community building. The survey comprised 548 people primarily human resources practitioners.
7:16 Toxic workplace: In the survey, respondents were given the following definition of “toxic workplace”: They said “For the purpose of this survey, we define a toxic workplace as one characterized by productivity-hindering interpersonal conflicts that tend to be characterized by distrust, bullying, resentment, unethical behaviors, manipulation, mean-spiritedness, or even harassment or discrimination.”
7:40 Here are some findings:
· 48 percent of respondents stated they agree their organizations is positive and non-toxic.
· Around 40 percent of employees stated they agree their organization is toxic.
· 55 percent don’t think their leaders are good at preventing problems before they begin.
· 50 percent don’t think leadership is good at having difficult conversations or managing conflict.
Again, that’s of 548 people that were surveyed. What I find even more interesting is this. When employees believe the leaders are living the organization’s values, this has a strong correlation to the organization being seen as having a positive culture. That means when leadership is seen as walking the talk, it creates a more positive workplace culture.
8:30 And so, in agreement, the survey reports that 84 percent of respondents who report a positive workplace culture agree that behaviors and procedures of their organizations tend to be aligned with the core values, while just 5% disagree with that.
8:47 For respondents who report a negative culture, perceptions of alignment with core values are nearly the reverse of those who report a positive culture. So for the negative culture, three-quarters of those respondents disagree that behaviors and procedures of their organization tend to be aligned with core values, while only 10% agree. So, with a negative workplace culture employees aren’t seeing leadership walking the talk.
Ultimately the analysis is that organizations aren’t building a positive culture proactively. The survey report suggests that it’s possibly because management lacks the required skills.
9:30 MUSIC: New Orleans Country Clarinet Shuffle, John Covert
Elizabeth Owens Bille, the EVERFI Head of Impact and Workplace Culture, said – she said this: “The findings from this survey are startling. Toxic workplace cultures are pervasive and it is critically important that organizations address workplace toxicity, as failing to do so can have far-reaching impacts for an organization,”. “Toxic cultures and harassment can lead to turnover, absenteeism, lost productivity, inability to recruit top talent … so the stakes are high for organizations to act to prevent these damaging behaviors from happening in their workplace.
By moving beyond a legal-only lens to these issues, increasing focus on disrespectful behaviors that harm culture, and giving employees bystander intervention skills to help them speak up and take action when they see them, you are able to not only stop negative behaviors before they escalate, but also maximize the positive impact of the training on workplace culture.”
10:36 In a press release talking about their own report on workplace culture, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says one in five Americans left a job in the past five years due to bad company culture. SHRM puts the cost of that turnover at $223B. Here’s what the SHRM President and CEO Johnny Taylor, Jr. says about that.
“Billions of wasted dollars, he says. Millions of miserable people. It’s not a warzone—it’s the state of the American workplace. Toxicity itself isn’t new. But now that we know the high costs and how managers can make workplaces better, there’s no excuse for inaction.” Johnny Taylor, Jr., CEO and President of Society for Human Resource Management.
11:23 MUSIC: Latin Spanish Salsa Music, by Bobby Cole
SHRM quotes results from another survey, this one done by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI) that show managers are responsible for 60 percent of workplace misconduct, and that senior managers are more likely to break the rules. In the same survey, more than 1 in 5 workers were retaliated against for reporting misconduct. A third of those who did not report misconduct were afraid of retaliation. One could leave the job, but abusive behaviors are so widespread in the workplace, that there’s no guarantee someone won’t get in a worse situation. The consequences of a bad work environment, they are dismal for workers.
Stay with me here. My personal theory about workplace civility is this:
· Civility in the workplace leads to better outcomes – I know, stating the obvious. Those outcomes would be: higher productivity, increased success.
· An inclusive workplace leads to better outcomes: increased productivity and success.
· A civil workplace leads to better success with inclusivity.
· And so, a civil, inclusive workplace will exponentially increase business success.
My two cents.
12:45 I’ve been reading Mastering Civility: A Manfesto for the Workplace by Christine Porath, published in 2016.
The first Chapter is titled Clueless. Porath says common examples of incivility include:
· Answering calls in the middle of meetings;
· Publicly mocking and belittling people;
· Teasing direct reports in ways that sting; or
· Taking credit for wins but pointing the finger at others when difficulties arise.
Porath conducted a study of 20,000 mostly white-collar employees across industries and she asked respondents why they behave uncivilly. Here’s what she reports.
More than half of the 20,000 employees responded that they behaved uncivilly because they were overloaded; 40 percent said they didn’t have the time to be nice, and a quarter said they were rude because their leaders were disrespectful. Another quarter reported that their companies lacked guidelines or training about how to treat people.
This confirmed what I’ve always thought, with people being thrown together in the workplace, it goes without saying that people will come in with varying ideas of acceptable behavior. Sometimes it must be outlined for them what the rules are in your particular organization, regarding acceptable behavior.
14:07 Chapter 2 is titled Sidelined, Stress: Deadlier than We Think
Porath refers to author Robert Sapolsky’s book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Sapolski, Porath says, explains that when people experience intermittent stressors like incivility for too long, or too often, they experience significant health problems. She also mentions a 2012 study by the Harvard School for Public Health that tracked women for 10 years and concluded that stressful jobs were just as bad for women’s health as smoking and obesity.
14:42 This corelates to information I shared from my first podcast, From Fired to Fired Up, that was posted on January 13th. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, wrote an article: How your workplace is killing you, it was published in 2018. In his article Pfeffer says:
The workplace is making people sick and even killing them – and people should care. With rising health-care costs all over the world, the workplace has become an important public health problem.
Pfeffer also wrote, Dying For A Paycheck, published by Harper Business in 2018.
15:18 MUSIC: Smoky Jazz, Bobby Cole
Earlier, I listed some of the ways Porath identifies uncivil behavior. But, just to make sure the point is clear, here are some examples she provides. She talks about one boss who said to another employee, “If I wanted to know what you thought, I’d ask you”. There was the leader who, after an employee overlooked a minor typo in an internal memo, screamed at the employee.
In using the word incivility, it’s easy to conflate that with, well, slight rudeness. Truthfully all those behaviors are abusive, and don’t belong in the workplace, the belittling, undermining and creating a climate of fear. In my second podcast, Workplace Abuse and Creating Accountability, posted on January 24th, I referenced Gary Powell who wrote about The Abusive Organization, in 1998 he wrote it for the Academy of Management Executive. Powell said:
An organization or employer that makes employees do what management wants through fear, intimidation and coercion, is described as abusive. Abusive organizations operate with callous disregard for their employees, not even displaying what might be a minimum amount of concern for their human needs.
High expectations… fair accountability for good work… and civility or courteous professionalism are not mutually exclusive. All of these can and should co-exist. If management believes they need a culture of fear to get quality work done, they are gonna get exactly the opposite.
16:46 Porath says that research shows that working in a group where incivility is present affects people’s mental health, even after accounting for general stress and other personal experiences of incivility. Her description is of a vicious cycle. She says, People tend to take the stress of incivility home with them, unleashing it on family members, who in turn carry the stress into their workplaces.
17:11 This is why, as I said in that second podcast, that it is my hope that we reverse the normalization of abuse and cruelty that exists in organizations…in the workplace. This destroys people’s lives and impacts their families. I hope that this conversation becomes a larger one where what is normalized is healthy, respectful organizations where employees can go to deliver for their employers, and to maximize their productivity. I also said in the podcast, and I keep saying it as it’s worth repeating that excellence and decency are not mutually exclusive.
17:45 MUSIC: Landscape, by Adrian Berenguer
17:51 Christine Porath says: Studies have found that “psychosocial” factors, such as work-related stress, are the most important variables in determining the length of a life. She references this from an article, Your Co-Workers Might Be Killing You, written by Lehrer and published in the Wall Street Journal online on August 20, 2011.
Senior leaders need to be clear that it’s for them to set the pace for how supervisors and managers should be leading people. That means they themselves would need to know and practice and model civility first.
The Ethics and Compliance Initiative says every organization should have a code of conduct, and that a code of conduct can be a benchmark for measuring an individual’s and an organization’s performance. An organization’s code of conduct should be required to be followed by all employees, from the top down, no exceptions. Hold everyone to the same standards.
18:48 This is what is reflected in the literature I’ve spoken about previously, specifically in the January 24th podcast.
18:53 Ebeid, Kaul, Neumann & Shane are researchers with Western Illinois University and who published a paper in the International Business and Economics Research Journal, it was titled, Workplace Abuse: Problems and Consequences. The authors say, “An organization becomes abusive when it permits or tolerates abusive employee treatment by supervisors or managers.” They say that while policies are often developed by Human Resources departments with some input of some level of management, it’s crucial for executive leadership to support such a policy and to clearly model the behavior. They also recommend educating managers and employees on acceptable behaviors and workplace conduct.
19:32 In their research the authors quote Chere Estrin who wrote about emotional abuse in the workplace, and she published it in ‘98 for Legal Assistant Today. Estrin placed the responsibility of addressing workplace abuse with leadership; she says, “…ultimately, emotional abuse is a management problem, and it must be addressed by leadership in a larger context.”
Why should organizations bother to do any of this? Because, the benefits to the company include:
· reduced employee turnover and greater employee loyalty
· lower levels of absenteeism, increased employee and…
· customer satisfaction, improved product/service quality, increased productivity -- this is something not enough employers pay attention to. It should be obvious; if you treat your employee well, this is likely going to have a positive effect on how they work with customers in and out of the organization.
This is what Christine Porath’s research confirms.
20:25 MUSIC: Such A Swingin’ Good Time, by Neil Cross
Next episode we’ll talk more about civility in the workplace, codes of conduct, and the experiences of individuals from marginalized communities in the tech industry.
Thank you for listening. You can email me with any thoughts, which I welcome, email me at: workplacefairnessanddignity@gmail.com. Tune in next time.
20:46
Materials and information referenced / links:
· Pivot Point: https://anchor.fm/elizabeth-hart/episodes/Workplace-Bullying-Fired-for-Speaking-Up-eqmfre
· Tailored for Success: https://www.tailoredforsuccess.org/
· Cuomo’s office terrorized me for doing my job as a journalist. By Morgan Pehme February 22, 2021: https://nypost.com/2021/02/22/cuomos-office-terrorized-me-for-doing-my-job-as-a-journalist/?utm_source=email_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
· Cuomo’s behavior created ‘hostile, toxic’ workplace culture for decades, former aides say. By Amy Brittain, Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles, Tracy Jan. March 6, 2021: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-toxic-workplace/2021/03/06/7f7c5b9c-7dd3-11eb-b3d1-9e5aa3d5220c_story.html
· Toxic Cultures, Negative Behaviors Prevalent In The Workplace. Facility Executive. Nov. 20, 2019: https://facilityexecutive.com/2019/11/toxic-cultures-negative-behaviors-prevalent-in-the-workplace/
· R.M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, 3rd ed. (New York: Owl Books / Henry Holt, 2004).
· EVERFI & HR.com HR Research Institute White Paper, Preventing Toxic Workplaces: http://info.everfi.com/rs/410-YCZ-984/images/Preventing_Toxic_Workplaces_Research_Report.pdf
· SHRM Reports Toxic Workplace Cultures Cost Billions, Sept. 25, 2019. https://www.shrm.org/about-shrm/press-room/press-releases/Pages/SHRM-Reports-Toxic-Workplace-Cultures-Cost-Billions.aspx
· Pfeffer, Jeffrey (2018, May 2) How your workplace is killing you. BBC.com. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180502-how-your-workplace-is-killing-you
· Pfeffer, Jeffrey (2018). Dying For A Paycheck. HarperCollins.
· Mastering Civility: A Manfesto for the Workplace. Christine Porath. 2016, Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
· Powell, G.N. (1998) The abusive organization. Academy of Management Executive, 12(2), 5, 95-96. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1998.650520.
· Your Co-Workers Might Be Killing You, by Jonah Lehrer Wall Street Journal online, August 20, 2011.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903392904576512233116576352
· Ebeid, Fred; Kaul, Tej; Neumann, Kathleen; Shane, Hugh (2003) Workplace Abuse: Problems And Consequences. Workplace Abuse: Problems And Consequences. International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER), 2(6). https://doi.org/10.19030/iber.v2i6.3811.
· Estrin, C. B. (1996, March/April). Emotional abuse in the workplace. Legal Assistant Today, 1(2), 78-79.