Workplace incivility remains the most prevalent form of mistreatment in organizations. It affects nearly 75 per cent of people who experience or witness interpersonal mistreatment.
This is an observation made by Rémi Labelle-Deraspe, a professor in the Department of Human Resources Management at the Université de Sherbrooke’s School of Management, who is interested in the issue of respect in the workplace. According to him, 34 per cent of workers experience interpersonal mistreatment, including incivility, and 44 per cent witness it. However, he indicates that it remains difficult to determine the trend of this phenomenon due to a lack of data.
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“We’re going to talk about exchanges of words or gestures that may at first glance seem inconsequential or clumsy, but which will still violate conventional norms regarding respect in the workplace,” explains Labelle-Deraspe. “We all share norms and a shared understanding of a certain morality or even of how to behave in a community or with each other, but it’s not universal; it’s often linked to the immediate (work) team.”
Forms of incivility can then take various forms such as being condescending, interrupting someone’s speech during a team meeting or even ignoring someone’s contributions, but they can also be more informal such as forgetting to invite a colleague to a happy hour when everyone else is invited.
“In all structures where things are going to be more rigid, where there is going to be more hierarchy, where there is going to be more power games, where we are going to find leadership styles that are going to be a little more authoritarian, where you find a lot of rules and restrictions, obviously that creates, whether on a structural or organizational level, conditions that are going to encourage incivility,” adds Labelle-Deraspe.
According to him, “high-performance” professional cultures are also more conducive to incivility, because they “excuse disrespect in the name of productivity.” The researcher deplores the lack of visibility regarding cases of incivility. He points out in particular that, of the hundreds of thousands of complaints received in 2024 by the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), only more than 4,500 were processed in connection with harassment situations.
“We’re going to pay attention to specific behaviors, behaviors that will be legally regulated, for which there will be laws. We’re going to think, for example, about discrimination or harassment, which are well regulated (legally) here,” he says. “But all the behaviors that will be found, a bit like an iceberg, under the surface of the water, those that are most prevalent, we’re not really addressing them, even though these are the behaviors that are most prevalent and spread the most.”
Labelle-Deraspe also mentions that people from visible minorities, as well as women, will be more likely to be the target of incivility.
“The more you find yourself at the intersection of identities that are going to be marginalized, the more you are at risk of experiencing social treatment that is going to be differentiated, particularly in the workplace, because these are smaller contexts, where there are fewer people, and where it comes back much more quickly,” he adds.
“Very worrying” data
The Director General of the Order of Certified Human Resources Advisors (CRHA), Manon Poirier, shares the same observation and deplores the “very worrying and quite high figures which are sadly not surprising.”
“This is the observation that our professionals have made in organizations,” she says. “Organizations reflect what is happening in society in terms of interpersonal skills and interaction with others, and our workplaces reflect this reality.”
She ensures that a lot of awareness, training and prevention is carried out with CRHAs, whether in the exercise of their functions or during their general training.
“The key is to have clear policies, and to bring up this issue often, to integrate it into codes of ethics, and to denounce them, because, as an organizational, management or leadership team, it is important to act, no matter who it concerns,” adds Poirier.
The Director General of the Ordre des CRHA also explains that the culture of teleworking could have increased cases of incivility, because “people will behave more in a different way behind their (computer) keyboard than in person.”
She points out that harassment remains one of the most common forms of incivility and that the latest figures show that one in five people are victims of it in their workplace.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
