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Author: Rob Crilly, senior US political reporter for Dailymail.Com in Washington, DC
Updated at 15:01 on March 17, 2024, 15:04 on March 17, 2024
- More than half of workers say they witnessed incivility at work in the last week
- Some 33% said they expected things to get worse this year, an election year
Growing animosity in the U.S. workplace is partly to blame for the country’s divisive politics, and it’s only going to get worse with this year’s presidential election, a top human resources expert says.
Johnny C. Taylor, executive director of the Society for Human Resource Management, said the culture of name-calling has spread from politics into offices.
The organization’s survey of 1,000 U.S. employees found that two-thirds had witnessed incivility at work in the last month, and about 57% had witnessed such behavior in the last week.
The problem isn’t just politics, he said, but workers’ growing tendency to bring their “whole selves” or “authentic selves” into the workplace, which undermines the guardrails of acceptable behavior and the disruptions of the pandemic and working from home. Influence. One must be civilized.
But this is a presidential election year, and politics is a particular focus. One-third of those surveyed said they think the problem will get worse in the next 12 months as Donald Trump and Joe Biden vie for the White House.
About 20 percent of employees said political affiliation contributed to a toxic environment, Taylor said.
He said either they felt uncomfortable enough to speak out, or they were attacked verbally, not physically, or had negative consequences in the workplace related to their political values.
“This was a real surprise for us.”
He said the issue was first raised ahead of the contentious 2019 election cycle, with results holding steady in 2024.
The past month has illustrated the vulgarity of American political discourse.
Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans questioned the president during his State of the Union address. Their unruly behavior on this solemn annual occasion would have been previously unthinkable.
But they are simply following the lead of their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
At a rally in Georgia last week, former President Trump imitated Biden, who has stuttered since childhood, and slurred his speech, imitating and mocking his White House rival.
“Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit,” he said.
Biden also has a history of insulting Trump, calling him a “clown” during a 2020 debate and telling the then-president to “shut up.”
In front of a small group of donors in California, he suggested that Trump’s recent comments were the ramblings of a madman and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB.”
“You know you can’t speak to someone based on their race, gender, national origin, etc.,” Taylor said.
“But everyone is free to openly discriminate or create a hostile environment for people based on political stance.”
He added that such serious incivility can create retention problems, an impact on productivity and an overall stain on workplace culture.
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