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Journalism of Courage
A Baylor University study has indicated that a co-worker’s rudeness can have a great impact on relationships far beyond the workplace.
The findings have suggested that stress created by incivility can be so intense that,at the end of the day,it is taken home by the worker and impacts the well-being of the worker’s family and partner,who in turn takes the stress to his/her workplace.
Employees who experience such incivility at work bring home the stress,negative emotion and perceived ostracism that results from those experiences,which then affects more than their family life — it also creates problems for the partner’s life at work, said Merideth J. Ferguson,Ph.D.,assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Baylor University Hankamer School of Business.
This research underlines the importance of stopping incivility before it starts so that the ripple effect of incivility does not impact the employee’s family and potentially inflict further damage beyond the workplace where the incivility took place and cross over into the workplace of the partner, she added.
In addition,since the employee comes home more stressed and distracted,the partner is likely to pick up more of the family responsibilities,and those demands may interfere with the partner’s work life. The study also found that such stress also significantly affected the worker’s and the partner’s marital satisfaction.
The study has been published online in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour.
