Incivility’s Cost to Employers: $2 Billion a Day

As civility efforts become a greater focus in the workplace, new figures from SHRM indicate just how much not addressing the problem can cost employers: collectively, roughly $2 billion a day.

The staggering amount comes from SHRM’s latest Civility Index, released Aug. 7, which finds in its analysis that U.S. organizations collectively lose more than $1.2 billion in reduced productivity per day due to uncivil behaviors at work and $828 million per day due to absenteeism caused by incivility. (Calculations are based on several factors, including the number of workers over 18 years old in the U.S. labor force, an average pay rate of $32.67 per hour, and the total number of collective acts of incivility occurring in the workplace each day.)

According to the Index, workers who experienced or witnessed incivility at work reported an average productivity loss of approximately 31 minutes per occurrence, while incivility is causing others to intentionally avoid the workplace altogether. The data shows that all workers, including those who did not experience or witness incivility at work, reported intentionally staying away from work an average of 0.61 days over the past month to avoid incivility. Workers who said they personally experienced or witnessed incivility while at work intentionally took an average of 1.5 days away from work over the past month due to the problem.

The alarming cost of incivility will likely serve as a further call to action for employers in addressing incivility in the workplace, said SHRM Lead Researcher Derrick Scheetz.

“Company leaders are constantly searching for ways to improve costs and drive efficiency,” he said. “These costs can easily be reduced by taking a focus on driving civil conversations and maintaining respect for one another. Plus, taking a focus on civility at work helps to create a better experience for employees, making this something that benefits all involved in multiple ways.”

Notably, about one-third of workers surveyed by SHRM even said they would take a pay reduction if it meant they could eliminate all forms of incivility in their jobs.

Overall, incivility in and outside of work is having an outsized impact on employees—and in some cases, it’s getting worse. U.S. workers encountered more uncivil acts in their everyday lives now than they did in May, according to SHRM’s Civility Index, collectively encountering more than 201 million acts of incivility per day in everyday life, up from 171 million per day in May. On average, U.S. workers personally experienced or witnessed more than one act of incivility in their everyday lives per day (an average of 1.22), or more than eight per week (an average of 8.51).

That increase may be due to political tension ahead of the presidential election this fall, Scheetz said.

“With this year being an election year in the U.S., we anticipated incivility to be on the rise given the likely heated nature of politics,” he said. “We believe that we are seeing this prediction begin to play out in the data.”

Civility Index Society Score Rises; Workplace Score Largely Unchanged

Although uncivil acts have risen in everyday lives, the rate at which uncivil behaviors occur in the workplace dropped slightly. SHRM’s workplace-level Civility Index score dropped slightly to 36.3 (down 1.2 points from May), while the societal-level Civility Index (in and out of work) score rose to 45.6 (from 42.3 in May).

SHRM’s Civility Index, launched in May, gauges how often people say they have experienced or witnessed uncivil behavior. The Index asks respondents to recall the past month and rank a series of statements on a scale from 0 (never) to 10 (almost always). Two sets of statements are shown to each respondent: one in the context of their everyday life (to produce a societal-level score) and one in the context of their workplace (to produce a workplace-level score). Total scores are produced by adding together scores from all items separately for the societal- and workplace-level question sets to produce a societal-level total score and a workplace-level total score. Final Civility Index scores are calculated and placed on a 100-point scale (0 being incivility never occurs, and 100 being incivility almost always occurs) for reporting on the societal-level score and workplace-level score.

The index is part of SHRM’s latest efforts to encourage employers to address incivility. SHRM is engaging businesses and individuals to be catalysts for civility through its “1 Million Civil Conversations” campaign.

Scheetz said one takeaway SHRM researchers have observed across their civility research is that people generally view their workplace as more civil than they view society. “There could be several explanations for this, but probably the biggest one is that workplaces almost always require civil behavior—otherwise, people risk losing their jobs,” he said.

When asked if they have personally experienced or witnessed any acts or instances of incivility in their lives over the past month, nearly three-quarters of U.S. workers (74%) indicated that they had, with 21% saying they personally experienced incivility, 37% saying they witnessed incivility, and 16% saying they both personally experienced and witnessed incivility, according to the index. Of these workers, 13% said they personally experienced or witnessed incivility daily, 49% said weekly, and 38% said monthly.

The most common behaviors workers viewed as an act of incivility in the workplace were intentionally interrupting or speaking over others, people being rude or inconsiderate, and gossiping or spreading rumors.

While many uncivil workplace behaviors are similar to those that occur in society, there are some differences, the research noted. For instance, interruptions were the top uncivil workplace behavior reported, while this behavior was the sixth-most reported behavior in society. Additionally, insulting or putting others down was one of the most common forms of incivility in society, but SHRM found this behavior occurs less often in the workplace.

Although the workplace is more civil than the world outside of it, the scores from the Index indicate the importance of taking action to prevent incivility from getting even worse, SHRM researchers noted.

Other industry experts have pointed to the importance of employers addressing incivility and keeping an eye on political tensions in the workplace in particular.

For example, Joseph L. Beachboard, chief employment attorney at Beachboard Consulting Group in Los Angeles, advised employers during a session at the SHRM Annual Conference & Expo (SHRM24) in Chicago in June not to shut down political discussions in the workplace, but instead set expectations for what is allowed.

“Employers should manage political expression with parameters, communicating to their employees what the behavioral expectations are and what is appropriate and inappropriate,” he said.