“Stop! In the Name of Civility”: Testing the Effectiveness of an Intervention to Reduce Workplace Incivility

Workplace incivility is a common problem within organizations. Recent data estimates that 96% of the total workforce population in the United States has experienced incivility at one time or another. Individual targets of incivility face detrimental effects to their psychological and professional well-being. Workplace incivility also leads to poor outcomes for workgroups and for organizations as a whole. Results are mixed for the use of formal training programs to curb incivility in organizations. A workshop designed to train employees on behaving in a civil manner in the workplace, as well as how to respond to workplace incivility, was implemented across multiple facilities of a healthcare organization. Pre- and post-training survey measures of team civility experiences, team cohesion, team-level norms for civility, interpersonal citizenship behaviors (OCB-I), and team performance served as dependent variables. Longitudinal data analysis methods using quasi-simplex four-wave cross-lagged panel analysis were employed to analyze the data. Results indicate that experiences of incivility may be reduced across time as a result of the civility intervention and that civility norms may be enhanced by the civility training. Positive trends in proximal and distal outcomes were also observed, though additional research is needed to support the efficacy of civility interventions to positively impact these outcomes. Practical implications for organizations wishing to curb workplace incivility through implementation of an intervention are also discussed