It is common knowledge that people in any particular workplace behave in different ways. Some behaviors shown by people in the workplace can be positive while others can be perceived negative. In as much as positive behavior help people to prosper, negative workplace behaviors can have negative consequences on the employees as well as the general performances of the firm. The ability to observe behavior also makes it possible for people to measure the same types of behaviors observed in the workplace. Therefore, this paper discusses how one can measure different behaviors at the workplace. The study does this by observing two behaviors, defining and measuring them as well as explaining how they affect overall work behaviors.
The two people observed in this study were the manager and one senior employee in the firm. Some of the behaviors observed in this study were harassment and bullying at the workplace. Harassment is a type of behavior that is usually exhibited by leaders and junior employees. Leaders use harassment to appear unapproachable to their subordinate employees. Harassment also grooms in leaders the habit of using leadership styles that do not enable them to nurture employees into becoming future leaders of the firm.
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On the same note, older employees also use this behavior to make it impossible for new employees to be easily oriented into the organizational system. In fact, instead of helping them get acquainted with the new work lace, older employees always aim to scare the new employees away by harassing them or even speaking negatively at the workplace. This behavior is perceived negative in any organization because it aims to create a non-conducive working environment. It also fails to promote effective teamwork, collaboration, and adequate communications skills between leaders and employees. Similarly, a harassing behavior also promotes ineffective organizational culture that leads to low performances among employees and leaders of the firm
Another negative behavior observed in the workplace was the act of bullying (Shwatz, 2016). This behavior was not only observed among employees but even in leaders of the firm. Most importantly, leaders in the firm engaged in bullying as a behavior through constantly giving their work to junior employees. This act is considered negative because it overworks the junior employee while leaving the leader with nothing to do. On the same note, bullying was also evident among employees in the organizations. Employees bullied each other by stealing their property and other things they used in the workplace. For example, one employee was fond of changing people’s password with the aim of getting them into trouble all the time. This behavior is negative because it wasted employee’s time, made them feel anxious, stressed and lowered their workplace morals and abilities to function well in the workplace.
Both harassment and bullying were two negative behaviors observed in the workplace in which the study was conducted. It was evident that the work forms of negative behaviors were common with both employees and managers alike. It was important that the leaders in the firm should find out ways of dealing with these behaviors to help improve overall organizational cultures. It was clear that the behaviors had a negative influence on the employees in the firm.
The scale and the table below was used to rate the behaviors observed in the workplace
Scale/Key
0 – No or Never
1 - Rarely
2 – Maybe or Sometimes
3 – Probably or Usually
4 – Yes or Always
| Prioritization Criteria | Potential Target Behaviors | |||
| Does this behavior pose a danger to the person or to the other? | 4 | |||
| How many opportunities will the person have to use to this new skill in the natural environment? Or how often does the behavior occur? | 3 | |||
| How longstanding is the problem? | 3 | |||
| Will changing the behavior produce higher rate of reinforcement for the person? | 2 | |||
| What is the relative importance of this target behavior to the future skill development and independent functioning? | 4 | |||
| Will changing the behavior reduce negative or unwanted attention from others? | 3 | |||
| Will changing the behavior produce reinforcement for significant others? | 3 | |||
| How likely is success in changing this behavior? | 2 | |||
|
How much will it cost to change this behavior? |
2 | |||
| Totals | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
It was important to rate the negativity of the behaviors at 4 because they had a negative impact on employee performances, teamwork, and affected ease of communication in the firm. Similarly, it was important to rate the importance of reinforcing the behavior towards skills development at 4 because it is believed that reinforcing harassment and bullying in the workplace would pave the way for effective communication, teamwork, nurturing future leaders and hence impact overall organizational development.
The researcher also observed that the leaders engaged in the act of perpetrating lies to employees. Lying was used by the leaders on the employees to get them to do their work. For example, a leader or senior employee would give their work to junior employees and lie to them that they do not have enough time to do the work because they are held up with other organizational activities. It was observed that lying led to laziness among leaders and senior employees who constantly used the behavior to evade work. It also constrained other employees with bulky work that they could not finish on time.
The data recording method used for the three observed behaviors was event recording. Event recording was important because it made it possible for the researcher to observe the frequency of the behavior (Altmann, 1974). It also made it possible for the study to record other techniques employed by the leader and the senior employees who engaged in lying, harassment, and bullying in the firm. The frequency of the behavior was an effective data recording procedure because it made it possible for the researcher to record how frequent the leader and the senior employee engaged in the behavior. The frequency of the behaviors would also make it possible for the researcher to quantify and relate the effect of the frequency on factors such as employee motivation, communication, and performances in the firm (Magnusson, 2000).
Data recording form
|
Observations Behavior |
Communication | Performances | Teamwork |
| Bullying | Hindered communication between employees and leaders | Reduced performances due to increased workload and promotion of laziness | Did not promote teamwork among employees. Made them feel inferior |
| Harassment | Hindered communication among employees | Reduced performances of employees due to large workload and time wastage | Had no effect on teamwork especially when the leader was involved in the behavior |
Event recording
| Behavior | Frequency for five days | Summary |
| Harassment | Everyday | The observation showed that the leader engaged in harassment behavior more often, he gave them his work and asked them to finish his work on time before they could do their own. This left them with a huge backlog |
| Bullying | Every day | The senior leader also involved bullying junior employees more frequently. This made them scared and lowered their abilities to perform well within the firm. On the same note, they also lacked the moral to do their daily duties hence leading to poor organizational performance. |
References
Altmann, J. (1974). Observational Study of Behavior: Sampling Methods. Behaviour. vol 49 Issue no 3 , 227–266.
Magnusson, M. (2000). Discovering hidden time patterns in behavior: T-patterns and their detection. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers. Volume 32, Issue 1 , 93–110.
Shwatz, M. (2016). The 5 most common unethical behaviors in the workplace. Philadelphia Business Journal , 12-31.
