Incivility is arguably one of the most significant challenges facing nurses around the globe. Warrner et al. (2016) define workplace incivility as any form of disrespectful behavior, harassment, abuse of power, and intimidation of employees in an organization. Contrastingly, the characteristics of a healthy working environment are shared goals, formal leadership, civil conversations, and organizational civility. Incivility creates a stressful working environment resulting in significant adverse consequences such as burnout, high labor turnover, and low job satisfaction among employees. Therefore, addressing the issue of incivility is a priority in health organizations. The Clark Healthy Workplace Inventory measures incivility in the workplace and having taken the test, I have a better understanding of the healthiness of my current place of work.
Description of Work Environment Assessment
Foremost, it is essential to describe the results of the work environment assessment. The assessment includes 20 statements evaluating the extent to which incivility behavior manifests itself in an organization. I got a score of 86 in the test as I answered completely accurate to almost all the questions in the inventory apart from three. The three statements were employees’ engagement in decision making; sufficiency of promotional opportunities; focus on employees’ wellness.
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How Civil is My Workplace and Why
Based on the work environment assessment, my workplace is highly civil due to several reasons. Foremost, everybody shares in the vision and mission of the organization that is founded on the values of respect, thus everybody in the organization uses polite languages when relating to each other. Secondly, there is open communication in the institution due to the high level of trust between the employees and management, thus people can report cases of incivility for quick resolution of such matters (Chapter 5). Besides, the company strives to improve the culture continuously, and this includes encouraging people to adopt civil behavior in their interactions (Chapter 9). Other characteristics of civility in the organization are effective teamwork, work-life balance, and employees willingness to recommend the hospital to other people.
Description of Situation of Incivility and Solution
However, it is essential to take note of challenges encountered in the continual promotion of civility in the organization. The lack of employee engagement in decision-making allows the management to abuse power as they can intimidate employee into following their decisions (Clark, 2015). Since the hospital is small, the promotional opportunities are few, and people may become uncivil when fighting for these few positions. Besides, the high employees’ co-payments for health insurance negatively affects the relationship between workers and management; the strain may lead to uncivil behavior. However, the open communication system helps to address these issues; thus incivility is significantly low in the organization.
Personal Experience of Incivility in the Workplace
Although my current workplace has a high level of civility, I experienced incivility in my previous job. There was a communication breakdown between the patient care technicians (PCT) and nurses that created a negative working environment. Primarily, the PCT help to provide personalized care to patients but are expected to work in collaboration with the nurses. However, the bulk of the work was left to the nurses, and the PCT was not held accountable for their actions. Undoubtedly, the nurses’ unfair treatment created a lot of tensions, and they felt they were subjected to harassment by the management. As a result, incivility affected the organization in more ways than one. One the nurses' motivation declined, thus, the rate of absenteeism in the organization increased.
Conclusion
The discussion reveals that the adverse impact of workplace incivility cannot be underestimated. Incivility is involves the harassment, intimidation, and disrespectful behavior of employees in organization. Civility in the workplace is enhanced by promoting open communication, building trust among employees, creating a good organizational culture, and involving employees in decision-making. Incivility presents itself in different situations like overburdening some employees and mot holding people accountable for their actions. The impact of incivility is absenteeism and high labor turnover.
References
Chapter 5, “Collaborative Leadership Contexts: Networks, Communication, Decision Making, and Motivation” (pp. 121–144)
Chapter 9, “Creating and Shaping the Organizational Environment and Culture to Support Practice Excellence” (pp. 247–278)
Clark, C. M. (2015). Conversations to inspire and promote a more civil workplace. American Nurse Today, 10(11), 18–23. Retrieved from https://www.americannursetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ant11-CE-Civility-1023.pdf
Griffin, M., & Clark, C. M. (2014). Revisiting cognitive rehearsal as an intervention against incivility and lateral violence in nursing: 10 years later. Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 45(12), 535–542. doi:10.3928/00220124-20141122-02
Warrner, J., Sommers, K., Zappa, M., & Thornlow, D. K. (2016). Decreasing workplace incivility. Nursing management, 47(1), 22-30.
