Workplace incivility during midterm elections | Dallas News Live

A question that we said before we went to break. How has your workplace been during this election cycle? Has it been civil? Ours is a little different because we're a newsroom, but our workplace is nice. At least I think so. I bought my producer Margaret a Coke Zero this morning. That makes me a nice guy in the newsroom. Joining me, Carolyn Johnson, president of SHRM Center for Inclusion and Diversity. Carolyn, you guys' new index found 42% of workers have experienced or witnessed political incivility at work. Yeah, that is correct. And good afternoon. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Tell me about this index. And I mean, I guess it shouldn't be a secret that politics kind of bleeds into the workplace, right? No, absolutely. And so you mentioned our index. So specifically, the SHRM Civility Index and the latest research that we've drawn there It talks about the fact that knowing that we have midterms coming up next week, 74% of workers are telling us that they have either saw or experienced incivility in the workplace. And so this is not just an issue of how people are experiencing each other. This is a management issue. And I know also in that index, it said that each uncivil act costs about 35 minutes of productivity. What do you mean by that? But are you saying these incidents happen and people step away to clear their mind and so they're less productive at work? Sure, so it could be any number of those things. So if we think about an example of what incivil behavior is, it could be talking over a co-worker. It could be mocking them based on your understanding of their political views. And when we talk about that 35 minutes, we all have the same amount of time in the day. And so whether it is a meeting needs to end, whether it is to your point, someone needs to step away, that's time that we're being paid to work that because of behavior that could have been prevented, we're not working for about 35 minutes after each act occurs. I know a lot of our viewers have been tired of these political ads ready for them the end, guys, the election is Tuesday, so we got a week to go, less than a week to go. What should someone do if they're in the workplace and they've already had their wits in, they're already like, this has been going on so long. What are some things that people should do in the workplace or just with your family? So starting with the question about the workplace, I think it's also important to identify where gaps exist. And so many times these behaviors happen because there's a manager gap. We need leaders to identify what incivility is and make sure that the consequences for this type of behavior when it goes bad are equal across the board. So leaders need to model civil behavior, but they also need to make sure that they're identifying and calling out and applying consequences across the board, no matter who is behaving in incivil behavior. So that's the workforce. And then when we think about our families, I think it's important for us to have conversations, educate one another, and continue the conversations. Carolyn, I'm gonna piggyback off of that. Thanksgiving's coming up, so that'll be after this election, after the results. So chances are some family members might not be happy, some family members may be happier than others. How do you deal with still trying to have good family time during the holidays when politics has consumed so many people's lives? Right, so this is also a piece of advice that you can apply at work or also at home. You have to set a code of conduct. So if you're like my family, you live all over the place, many different perspectives. So before you hang your coat, we will be very clear on what we are going to talk about, the way in which we'll talk about it. And we'll have someone, it's usually me, right? We'll have someone making sure, like we're asking managers to do, that we are modeling that, that we're present, we're paying attention, because we want an experience for everyone to be positive. And in the workplace, it's about productivity. It's not about personal views all the time. All about communication. Carolyn Johnson, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.