Respectful Workplace

Respectful Workplace – No one wants to feel they are being disregarded.

Whether you’re a business owner, employer, manager or employee, you want to feel like your ideas, feelings and presence are respected.

Allowing employees to display disrespectful or degrading behaviours will result in a poor workplace culture and is likely to increase employee turnover.

Workplace misconduct including bullying, harassment, discrimination and sexual harassment can all be defined as one person or a group of people acting towards another person without

• Respect
• Courtesy
• Dignity

These three word should be included in every workplace bullying harassment, discrimination and sexual harassment policy for example

“All employees should treat each other and ……… with respect, courtesy and dignity”

How do you build and maintain a respectful workplace:

• always treat each other with courtesy, respect and consideration
• avoid negativity
• be inclusive, value others and accept differences
• recognise the efforts and achievements of others.

Respectful communication is our capability to assert our views and listen to the views of others.

This is particularly important when there are conflicts in the workplace or any kind of miscommunication.

Respectful behaviours and communication

Respectful communications is our capability to assert our views and listen to the views of others. This is particularly important when there are some conflicts in the workplace or any kind of miscommunication.

To build and maintain a respectful workplace, staff are responsible for always treating each other with courtesy respect and consideration. being inclusive, valuing others and accepting their differences. recognising the efforts and achievements of others.

Respectful behaviours and communications may start with understanding what workplace misconduct is and how to ensure your behaviour is always of the high standard and:

• Ensuring that you do not engage in forms of misconduct directed towards fellow employees such as bullying harassment or sexual harassment
• Complies with the behavioural expectations of your organisation. See your company polices and Code of Conduct.
• Is the sort of behaviour that you would expect to be directed towards you

Respectful Communication skills include

• Practicing politeness, courtesy and kindness.
• Listening graciously.
• Avoiding negativity.
• Talking to people – not about them.
• Not being overly critical.
• Treating people equally.
• Being emotionally empathetic.
• Valuing others’ opinions.

Importance of Mutual Respect in the Workplace

No one wants to feel like they are being disregarded. Whether you’re a manager, owner or employee, you want to feel like your ideas, feelings and presence are respected. Allowing your employees to display disrespectful or degrading behaviours will result in a poor workplace culture and is likely to increase employee turnover.

Encouraging mutual respect will help to:

Reduce workplace stress, conflict and problems. An increase in workplace respect will help to improve communication between colleagues, increase teamwork and reduce stress as peace in the workplace soars.

Increase productivity, knowledge and understanding. As mutual understanding and respect increase, the exchange of ideas will rise which will increase company knowledge and innovation. Reducing the amount of pettiness and workplace politics will also assist in increasing productivity. The goal will shift from one-upping a colleague to focusing on the company as a whole.

Additionally, your company will experience a more positive culture and you will notice an increase in employee satisfaction and a decrease in turnover. Respect in the workplace is vital, and it is not solely the responsibility of your employees.

Employers, Managers, supervisors  must lead by example, demonstrating acceptable behaviours and attitudes, and treating all your employees fairly.

Practical communication tips

• Think before you speak, especially in emotional or tense situations
• When having difficult conversations remain calm, stick to the topic and don’t get distracted and go off topic
• Don’t become emotional or engage in arguments
• If emotions start to run high end the meeting, re-schedule and take time to reflect
• Think twice before sending ‘that’ email
• Clearly communicate the purpose of a meeting when sending an email. For example, if you are sending an email to an employee in regard to a misconduct issue or performance issue that needs to be discussed, do not use:
• • A little chat
  • A catch up
  • If you really want to use “A catch up’ a better alternative could be, “A catch up to discuss ………….”

Aggression in the workplace.

Aggression in the workplace  an extreme form of a lack of respect and high level workplace bullying. So, the same rules apply.

Aggression in the workplace is often as a result in a breakdown in communications.

Question – Are high levels of stress, difficult project time frames and heavy workloads an excuse for aggression in the workplace?
Answer – Definitely not.

Question – Is aggression ever a reasonable response in the workplace?

Answer – No never

Defining Aggression in the Workplace

Threat: any statement or behaviour that leads a person to believe they are in danger of being physically attacked. This can be an implied or actual threat to safety, health or well-being.

Assault or physical attack: the direct or indirect application of force by a person to the body of, the clothing or equipment worn by, another person, whereby this action creates a risk to health and safety.

Dealing with aggression in the workplace

• If you feel threatened, walk away to de-escalate
• Think before you speak, especially in emotional or tense situations
• When having difficult conversations remain calm, stick to the topic and don’t get distracted and go off topic
• Don’t fight fire with fire, but remain assertive
• Don’t become emotional or engage in arguments
• If emotions start to run high end the meeting, re-schedule and take time to reflect
• Think twice before making ‘that’ comment of sending ‘that’ email

Hostile Work Environment

A hostile work environment is where conduct and speech typically is intimidating, offensive, abusive and/or otherwise offensive, going beyond rudeness or casual joking.

To qualify as a “hostile” workplace, conduct must be intentional, severe, recurring and/or pervasive and interfere with the employee’s ability to perform his/her job.

A hostile work environment can develop where there is an overall lack of respect for each other.

In the case of a hostile work environment a good option for employers is to conduct training to re-enforce the behavioural expectations of the organisation.

Swearing in the workplace

• It is important to understand that different work environments may have differing views towards swearing in the workplace
• In addition, people in a workplace may have differing views on the use of swearing in the workplace and employees may find it offensive
• Swearing at a person would in most cases be deemed as lack of respect and bullying
• Swearing in general could create a hostile working environment
• Leaders, managers and supervisors should always strive to model appropriate behaviour of the highest standards and lead by example.
• If in doubt, consider how the person hearing the swearing or in the vicinity feels about the language being used

Respectful Workplace Lesson for employers

• Create a culture that promotes respect at all levels
• Train you employees so that they understand what respect is, what the behavioural expectation of the organisation are and what miscount is and how it is a lack of respect
• Ensure that complaint of misconduct including bullying, harassment, discrimination and sexual harassment are taken seriously and managed appropriately.

How can AWPTI help?

We have a number of training programs that can assist your business to promote respect in the workplace
https://awpti.com.au/respect-in-the-workplace/
https://awpti.com.au/sexual-harassment-training/
https://awpti.com.au/workplace-behaviour-training/

All courses can be conducted in person or remotely via Zoom or MS Teams.

Our programs are designed from a reality based perspectives, not what could or might happen, but what is actually occurring in workplaces all over the country. This tends to make the training highly engaging as participants can get a real of sense of how misconduct such as bullying and sexual harassment affects workplaces and employees.

All of our training is conducted by Phil O’Brien a highly qualified and experienced workplace investigator. The programs have been developed as a result of  Phil having to investigate 100s of complaints of misconduct including bullying, harassment, sexual harassment, fraud, theft, misuse of resources including IT and email and many more.  The training is not just theoretical, it is based on actually incidents, complaints and issues experienced.

Please contact us for more information –  enquiries@awpti.com.au

AWPTI – Workplace training based Sydney delivering training national wide
Misconduct training, bullying training, harassment training & sexual harassment training, dispute & grievance resolution training

https://awpti.com.au/
Other training programs provided by AWPTI – https://awpti.com.au/training/