Written by Ann Barker, Head of Growth and Partnerships, WorkInConfidence
When we think about disrespect at work, it is easy to picture the obvious examples.
Someone shouting at a colleague. A humiliating comment in a meeting. An inappropriate joke. A manager openly belittling a member of their team.
But disrespect in the workplace is not always loud. Sometimes it is an eye roll, being repeatedly interrupted, an idea dismissed without consideration, being deliberately left out of a conversation. a contribution that goes unacknowledged. Or, a senior or high-performing employee whose behaviour is tolerated because “that’s just what they’re like”.
Individually, some of these things can appear relatively minor. When they become part of everyday working life, however, they can have a significant effect on how people feel about their workplace, whether they feel comfortable speaking up and, ultimately, on the organisation itself.a
Every workplace will have disagreements. People occasionally get frustrated with one another, communications are misunderstood and managers sometimes get things wrong.
A disrespectful culture is different. It develops when behaviours that diminish, dismiss or exclude people become normal or are allowed to continue without being challenged.
That might include:
- Talking over or repeatedly interrupting people
- Sarcasm, eye-rolling or belittling comments
- “Banter” that is regularly at somebody else’s expense
- Public criticism or humiliation
- Gossip, cliques, or deliberately excluding people
- Dismissing someone’s ideas without proper consideration
- Taking credit for another person’s work
- Withholding information someone needs to do their job
- Shouting, intimidation, or unnecessarily aggressive communication
- Applying different standards depending on someone’s role or seniority
- Allowing poor behaviour to continue because an individual performs well, or is difficult to challenge
The pattern, and what happens when someone tries to challenge it, can tell us much more about an organisation’s culture.
Some of the most damaging workplace cultures may not look particularly dramatic from the outside.
There may be no shouting in corridors. Few formal grievances. No obvious confrontation. Instead, people learn how the organisation works.
They know which manager not to disagree with. They know whose behaviour is best ignored. They know that raising a concern is likely to create more difficulty than staying quiet.
Gradually, people may stop contributing ideas, avoid challenging decisions, stay quiet in meetings, or discuss problems privately rather than raising them.
Eventually, some may decide that leaving completely is easier than trying to change things.
That silence can easily be misinterpreted.
For an employer, a lack of complaints can feel reassuring.
It may mean people are happy, problems are being dealt with effectively, and employees feel respected.
But that doesn’t automatically mean those things.
There is another possibility: people may simply have decided that speaking up is not worth it.
Research from the CIPD illustrates the potential consequences. Its Good Work Index 2024 found that a quarter of UK employees surveyed had experienced workplace conflict in the previous year. Among those experiencing conflict, the most commonly reported behaviour was being undermined or humiliated, cited by 48%. Those experiencing conflict were also twice as likely to say they were planning to leave their job in the following 12 months, 33% compared with 16% of those who had not experienced conflict.
Disrespect is often considered a culture or employee relations issue. But when poor workplace relationships develop into conflict, there can be a significant financial impact as well.
ACAS research estimated the annual cost of workplace conflict to UK organisations is £28.5 billion, equivalent to more than £1,000 for every employee. The highest costs were associated with employment relationships ending, including £11.9 billion attributed to resignations.
https://www.acas.org.uk/workplace-conflict-estimating-the-cost-to-employers
The cost to an individual organisation can appear in many different places:
- Employee turnover and recruitment
- Absence and reduced productivity
- Management and HR time spent dealing with conflict
- Grievances, investigations and disciplinary processes
- Loss of knowledge and experience when people leave
- Reduced collaboration and willingness to share ideas
- Legal and reputational costs when inappropriate behaviour escalates
None of these is likely to appear in the accounts under a heading marked “disrespect”.
That is precisely why the financial impact can be so easy to overlook.
There can also be an even less visible cost. When people don’t feel respected, they may become less willing to question a decision, point out a mistake, challenge something that does not seem right, or suggest a better way of doing things.
An organisation can lose valuable information long before it loses the employee.
This is where employee voice becomes particularly important.
Organisations need ways of understanding what employees are experiencing before an issue becomes a formal grievance, disciplinary matter or resignation.
Surveys, pulse surveys, conversations with managers, employee forums, and confidential or anonymous Speak Up channels can all provide different opportunities for people to be heard.
No single channel will suit everybody or every concern. What matters is that employees have somewhere they feel able to go, and confidence that somebody will listen when they do.
A respectful workplace is not one where everybody agrees.
Healthy organisations need challenge. Employees should be able to question decisions, offer different ideas, give difficult feedback, and raise concerns. Managers also need to be able to have honest conversations about performance and behaviour.
Respect is not about avoiding difficult conversations. It is about how those conversations happen.
A respectful workplace is one where people can disagree, challenge, make mistakes and raise concerns without being diminished for doing so.
A quiet meeting is not necessarily a harmonious meeting. A team that always agrees with its manager is not necessarily an engaged team. And an organisation receiving very few concerns is not necessarily an organisation where there are very few concerns to raise.
Understanding whether people genuinely feel respected requires looking beyond policies and formal complaints.
Employers might ask:
- Are people comfortable disagreeing with managers?
- Whose voices do we hear most often, and whose do we rarely hear?
- Are certain behaviours tolerated from particular individuals?
- What happens when somebody challenges poor behaviour?
- Do employees believe concerns will be taken seriously?
- Do employees have an alternative if they do not feel comfortable speaking to their manager?
- What might employees be discussing with each other that they are not telling us?
The answers may provide a more useful picture of workplace culture than the number of formal complaints received.
When people are listened to, treated fairly and see that concerns lead to appropriate action or learning, confidence can grow.
This does not mean every concern will be upheld or every employee will receive the outcome they hoped for. It means demonstrating that raising an issue is worthwhile and that employees will be treated with respect for doing so.
Most organisations will already have policies covering bullying, harassment, grievances and expected standards of behaviour. Policies matter. But employees experience culture through everyday interactions.
It is created in meetings, conversations, emails, decisions and the way people respond when somebody says, “I’m not comfortable with this.”
Respect therefore needs to be something employees experience, not simply something an organisation says it values.
Perhaps one of the most useful measures of a respectful workplace is not whether everybody appears happy. It is whether people feel safe enough to say when they are not.
People stay where they feel heard and safe.
Elements of disrespect fall under the heading of Bullying. Read more about this in our Employer Guide: Workplace Bullying – The Definitive Guide
At WorkInConfidence, we help organisations capture meaningful employee feedback in a way that supports trust, transparency and action, using anonymous two-way communication designed to encourage honest voice.
If you’d like to explore what that could look like for your organisation, we’re happy to share examples and walk you through it.
Email: [email protected] I Tel: 0114 304 9648
FAQ's
A safe and secure two-way anonymous channel for your people to raise concerns via phone, tablet, or PC, ensuring you are aware of any workplace issues, and can respond quickly and accordingly
Disrespectful behaviour may not meet the threshold for bullying or harassment, but that does not mean it should be ignored. Left unchallenged, it can become normalised or escalate.
Read the WorkInConfidence Blog on workplace bullying here:
Employers need to look beyond formal complaints to understand what employees are really experiencing. Regular employee surveys and pulse surveys, conversations with managers, employee forums and confidential or anonymous Speak Up channels can all help identify patterns of behaviour that might otherwise remain hidden.
The important thing is to give employees different ways to share concerns and to pay attention to recurring themes. Early insight gives organisations the opportunity to address problems before they develop into formal grievances, increased absence or employees deciding to leave.
People may worry about repercussions, feel the behaviour is too minor to report formally, believe nothing will change, or simply not feel comfortable raising it with their manager.
Easily set up, run and interpret surveys on engagement, respect, wellness or other topics to ensure you always understand your people, their needs and motivations.
A confidential external phone line with a dedicated Speak Up Guardian for your people to raise concerns with. We also provide training in Freedom to Speak Up, Speaking up and safeguarding processes.