Rudeness no good for wellness; is contagious
Rudeness in the workplace is contagious. A rude workplace culture is nasty for employees, but it can also have a negative effect on the success of their employer too, a new study has confirmed.
Trevor Foulk, a doctoral student in management at University of Florida, said most workers will go their entire careers and not experience true aggression at workplace, but people experience rudeness all the time in their day to day jobs.
‘Rudeness has an incredibly powerful negative effect on the workplace,’ Foulk said. ‘When people experience rudeness they perform worse, they’re less creative, and they’re less helpful with coworkers.’
Foulk has discovered that a mechanism in the brain is switched on when we experience rudeness, drawing our attention away from the work we’re paid to do.
He studied students’ reaction between a late-arriving student and a study leader before asking them to respond to a fictitious customer email. When the study leader reacted angrily to the late student’s arrival, the students were more likely to answer the email in a rude way.
Being kind at workplace is beneficial to both – the employee as well as the employer. ‘Rudeness culture’ from workplace should be strongly discouraged.
