In my practice, I see a lot of trends where the quantity of certain behaviors or issues seem to run in cycles.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of “creep” & “jerk” issues arise in businesses. This happens when a business has a very difficult employee who behaves like a creep & a jerk, yet their conduct might not be illegal. Most of the time, the offender is a man, but in a minority of cases, women are guilty too.
The behaviors these people exhibit are pretty obvious to everyone but themselves & those closest to them. They leer & stare, they make ambiguous sounds at co-workers like whistles & grunts, they stand too close to or deliberately get in the way of co-workers, & they’re generally unpleasant to be around. Also, their conduct isn’t secretive. In fact, most people know who the offenders are via the grapevine, if not from personal experience.
The general consensus among my clients & me is that these employees are immature & oblivious to their behavior. They seem to have no concern for what their co-workers think of them. I won’t go deeper into analysis lest we venture into the “regarded as” area of disability law.
However, many of my clients seem to have difficulty confronting the offender. Sometimes the difficulties are due to the offender being a great performer (except for their behavior), & because they’re not doing anything illegal, the behavior is tolerable on an intermittent basis. Alternatively, the claims never get beyond the grapevine because the victims are afraid to talk about the offender, for fear of retaliation or just not knowing what to do.
One of the tactics I’ve been using is to publicly “out” the offender, & even open up discussion of these issues to the broader workforce; i.e., increased transparency in dealing with these issues. Essentially, we convene an all-staff meeting & openly discuss the offensive behavior. In some instances, the offender might even be present. In fact, I haven’t actually done this yet, but I’ve spoken with clients about doing role playing & including the offender in this exercise. The basic idea is to increase transparency by directly calling the behavior to the offender’s attention & using their response as an indicator of their ability to improve. If nothing else has had an impact on the offender, & there’s still a belief that the offender can be rehabilitated, then talking about their behavior in front of others might work.
I’ve found that by increasing & broadening discussion of the behavior of these creeps & jerks there seems to be fewer incidents of bad behavior, & it’s easier to hold the offender accountable, because it’s not some dirty little secret, & it shows that management isn’t afraid to openly confront & deal with this behavior. The offender also has the chance to see the impact of their behavior on those they work closest with. If the offender truly understands what’s going on, it makes remediation simpler. If they have no clue, you’ll see denial & rationalization, & you’ll know that they can’t improve. It also makes it easier to fire the offender because you can just tell them that employees find them creepy or a jerk. No one wants to work with creeps & jerks, unless they’re explicitly paid to do so. But, these types of tactics shouldn’t be used by novices (don’t try this at home ). It takes someone with confidence, savvy & great communication skills to successfully engage employees in this context.
I agree that sometimes they may respond to the roleplaying, most of the time they don’t because they don’t see their comportment as a problem. Why? Because they are the “sales achievers.” The ones who bring in the “money.” Their direct reports instead of telling the “failure as a human being” to mind your manners or to treat coworkers and other direct reports decently, they skirt around them instead because they don’t want to “rock the boat.” My top achiever will leave us! So what if s/he says a few off kilter things. So what about the (racial, sexist add whatever) joke. The complainers listen to that stuff every day and watch it on their cable channel. People have to just overlook it, get over it and move on. The direct report did not nip this kind of comportment from day one, and when it becomes an out of control monster, they are incapable of doing anything about it.
How about this as an alternative, instead of the stupid roleplaying, with the modicum hope that the offender will recognize themselves and hear the muses and understand that their inappropriate behavior will stop:
Employee, I am going to clarify something to you that was made clear to me at the inception of my career. In this world of ours there are two types of clients: internal and external. Your responsibility as a member of member of the human race, and as a professional is to treat them the same way. The same way you say please and thank you to your external client because they are going to bring in the money, you say please and thank you to your internal client because they are going to ensure that the money stays here. Don’t kid yourself. You can’t do it alone. Something will get missed. Can you write the letter, proof it, sign it, copy it, place the stamp on it, mail it, and place the file copy in the file? Sure you can. It’s not an appropriate use of your time. Replace the concept of the letter with anything you want, email, meeting scheduling; ordering a sandwich, it’s irrelevant. One person can’t do it all and we are not supposed to either. We are supposed to work and get along with others. We learned that, for the most part in kindergarten. Is your colleague overly sensitive in the word processing pool? Maybe. Is your colleague a snob in accounting? Maybe. Is the deli counter work at the local market off the mark? Maybe. Here’s the difference. You don’t have to go to the local market, you can go somewhere else. YOUR captive colleague in word processing and accounting can’t go somewhere else. Then give this person as much professionalism and respect that you would give your external client.