There’s little question that American society is more divided today than it’s been at any time in recent history. Now, those tensions — and even hostilities — are increasingly being reflected in many workplaces, too. A recent report pulls together data showing just how frequent those acts of incivility between coworkers have become as well as their their costs to businesses — and offers ideas on how employers may start to address the sources of those conflicts.
Those insights come in “Beyond Incivility: The Soaring Business Cost of America’s Deteriorating Civility,” an analysis recently published by corporate security research and advisory firm, Security Executive Council (SEC). To quantify the rising incidence and expenses of workplace clashes, the paper relied on earlier study data, particularly the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) most recent Civility Index. Those sources helped reveal that a very worrying and expensive trend that began in 2019 is now accelerating.
According to SHRM data, U.S. employees were subject to 208 million acts of daily workplace incivility — or 144,000 each hour — during the first quarter of the year. That represented a 21.5 percent increase over the same period in 2024. By the trade association’s calculation, those conflicts are costing employers a whopping $2 billion every day.
The different line items in that total are as diverse as the kinds of incivility workers are exposed to on the job. Those frequently include brusque or biting emails from colleagues or managers, being the butt of jokes that cause resentment, or harsh comments that leave recipients feeling slighted, destabilized, or angry. On the other end of the scale, the SEC report says, are cases of “retail theft, rule defiance, and even violent incidents” that have been on the rise over the past half decade.
One consequence of those different forms of aggression is that 63 percent of respondents to the SHRM survey said they thought U.S. society had become uncivil generally. Against that background, other recent studies found over 74 percent of workers saying they’d experienced those acts of incivility at work.
The consequences for businesses are diverse, but always harmful.
Some research has shown it takes nearly 35 minutes for people to settle down and refocus on work after either being party to or the target of workplace incivility — freezing their productivity during that time. Meanwhile, when that behavior is left unaddressed, it tends to strengthen and spread across the workforce, as employees figure past restraints have become unnecessary, or are even a sign of weakness that encourages others to attack.
That toxicity undermines workplace happiness and harmony, and in some cases can result in lawsuits that are costing business owners $1.6 billion a year to resolve. More commonly, however, those clashes undermine staffing stability by pitting coworkers against each other, and encouraging disgusted employees to find work in more peaceful environments.
“Workers who rate their workplace as uncivil are more than twice as likely to say they will leave their job within a year compared to those in civil environments,” the SEC report says.
According to the SHRM’s Civility Index, employees whose feelings of wellbeing at work have declined the fastest are women, people from underrepresented communities, and younger workers — meaning increasing quit rates often reduce workforce diversity. Previous studies have shown greater uniformity of staff members usually results in decreasing creativity, innovation, and productivity across the wider business.
So what can employers do to try and halt the rising tide of incivility? The SEC study didn’t offer concrete recommendations, but did point to reasons how workplace aggression spreads, and with those, ideas to stop that.
The first take-away from the SEC’s observations is that workplace incivility flourishes when managers don’t take a determined and energetic stand responding to it. Many participants in the SHRM survey said acts of aggression increased when supervisors’ reaction to earlier incidents were viewed as half-hearted or indecisive.
To prevent that, the SEC report says companies should set clear and firm rules barring unacceptable behavior and speech. They many also choose to help managers with enforcing those regulations through training to deal with the many forms that incivility takes — be it cutting criticism, or acts of violence.
“The common thread across incivility, rule-breaking, and violence is that they thrive in environments where norms and accountability are weak,” the SEC report noted. “Companies that cultivate a respectful culture, clear expectations of behavior, and swift consequences for misconduct can mitigate many of these issues.”
To combat workplace incivility, the SEC suggests investing in civility training that coaches managers on how to identify and address it before it festers into workplace violence. Building stronger security systems to prevent internal fraud and theft can also help.
As part of that strategy, the SEC paper suggested employers integrate workplace civility as one of their key performance indicators — and do that immediately, rather than hope the trend reverses on its own. The reason? With the divisions and conflicts in wider U.S. society continuing to multiply, nearly 40 percent of human relations experts expect the rates and intensity of workplace conflicts will get worse before they get better.
Bruce Crumley
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