Don’t Forget the Role of Civility Interventions in Workplace Sexual Harassment

Details

• Personal Author:
  Magley VJ ; Walsh BM
• Description:
  Workplace civility is positive behavior that serves to build and reinforce prosocial norms of mutual respect at work (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). Civility involves conveying regard, kindness, dignity, and respect to all. Workplace civility training is similar to, yet different from, workplace sexual harassment training. Workplace civility training has a positive valence, emphasizing knowledge and skill building to facilitate positive and respectful interactions at work. Civility training can help to establish norms for mutual respect by emphasizing appropriate and inappropriate conduct, delineating the benefits of civility and respect, and giving people the tools to navigate challenging interpersonal interactions, thereby squashing out incivility (i.e., rudeness and disrespect; Andersson & Pearson, 1999) when it occurs. By helping to eliminate workplace incivility, it is likely that workplace civility training will also eliminate sexual harassment given the inherent connection between these destructive behaviors. The empirical research finds a direct connection between incivility and gender harassment (Lim & Cortina, 2005), which is the most common form of sexual harassment (Magley, Waldo, Drasgow, & Fitzgerald, 1999). By extension, ending gender harassment could have the greatest effect on ending all forms of sexual harassment. We are not alone in our call to encourage the use of workplace civility training to prevent sexual harassment. Others have also made this connection (cf., Cortina et al., 2002; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Roehling & Huang, 2017), including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in their report by the select task force on the study of harassment in the workplace (Feldblum & Lipnic, 2016). In their words, "The beauty of workplace civility training is that it is focused on the positive-what employees and managers should do, rather than on what they should not do. In addition, by appealing to all individuals in the workplace, regardless of social identity or perceived proclivity to harass, civility training might avoid some of the resistance met by interventions exclusively targeting harassment. (Feldblum & Lipnic, 2016, p. 55)" Ultimately, we believe that employees may be more receptive to and more motivated to engage in workplace civility training. We also believe that civility training can be an important tool to address sexual harassment. But just as there is a need for research on sexual harassment training, there also exists the need to evaluate the long-term benefits of workplace civility training. Given the many challenges present in attempting to bring about culture change in organizations that tolerate sexual harassment, we suggest that researchers and practitioners not ignore the role of workplace civility training in order to quash sexual harassment. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Behavior Occupational Health Safety Sex Characteristics Staff Development
• Keywords:
  Attitude Gender Factors Occupational Psychology Training Workforce Development
• ISSN:
  1754-9426
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Connecticut ; Illinois ; OSHA Region 1 ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  39-41
• Volume:
  12
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20063994
• Citation:
  Ind Organ Psychol 2019 Mar; 12(1):39-41
• Email:
  bwals2@uis.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2019
• Performing Organization:
  University of Connecticut Storrs
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:f9ab5c36fa7956bc105f383839e071863c542539efbbf7c9c3943885bbdce2d9857514c337ecf978b237a835533fdb6f89a99fc433c97de71291d2313cba1153
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/222523/cdc_222523_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 79.30 KB ]