Screaming restaurant customers. Pool patrons carrying around copies of a facility’s rules. Families of hospital patients yelling and threatening to sue. These are all real-life examples of what frontline workers around the world have experienced — all of them disheartening.
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Fear and Stress on the Job
Workers and managers explain why incivility is a company problem, not an individual one — and how to address it.
November 09, 2022
· Long read
Summary.
Frontline managers who spoke to HBR about the incivility that they and their employees face in the workplace outlined three key strategies to support employees: intervening in the moment, encouraging candor, and having a process for responding to incivility. Yet frontline workers said their managers rarely implemented these strategies, which compounded the stress created by ill-behaved customers, clients, and patients. If managers would only pay attention to what happens on the front lines, many of these workers said, it would benefit them.
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