Lack of civility in U.S. workplaces is costing American businesses an estimated $2.1 billion per day, according to new research released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). The organization sifts through reports of rudeness, terse emails, and snippy interactions, and finds reduced productivity and absenteeism costing companies’ bottom line.
SHRM’s Civility Index research found that U.S. workers collectively experience 208 million “acts of incivility” each day, a figure that rose sharply around the 2024 election season and remains near record highs. (It’s also up from 198 million in the last quarter.) This nonstop stream of disrespect—from subtle slights to overt hostility—translates into costly absenteeism, sagging morale, and lost output.
“We know that number,” said SHRM’s chief human resources officer Jim Link in a recent interview with Fortune. “That’s $2.1 billion in lost productivity.”
What’s driving the surge in rudeness
SHRM says the spike in office incivility is fueled by broader socio-political tensions, pandemic-induced stress, and what Link calls “digital bravery,” a phrase that conjures up the “keyboard warrior” of the social media era. Simply put, people feel emboldened to say things online that would never fly face-to-face. Differences in political views, social issues, and even immigration policy are leading to workplace friction, as employees struggle to navigate heated debates and cultural divides.
“Digital bravery is this idea that you can say whatever you want, about whomever you want, on any given topic from the safety and security of your screen,” Link told Fortune, adding that he sees it having an impact on American communities, society at large, but also that particular person and, maybe, the workplace. “If people are exercising this right of digital bravery, then perhaps it’s leeching or leaking its way into our workplaces, into our communities, into our society. We think it’s certainly possible.”
SHRM isn’t the only organization studying this. Link noted the Duke Dialogue Project does some work in this space, as does a group at the University of Miami. Still, SHRM is offering a relatively unique insight into what rudeness means for the world of work.
Real impact on well-being
SHRM’s research found the effects of office incivility reverberate well beyond hurt feelings. Managers report uncivil workplaces have lower psychological safety, weaker team cohesion, and poorer outcomes across inclusion and diversity metrics—factors that CEOs care about because they directly affect bottom-line results.
Link said this could be related to separate research that SHRM has done around “well-being” in the workplace, but said SHRM has not find correlation to equal causation here. As of May, more than one-third of employees surveyed said their job causes high levels of stress. The well-being picture beyond that is mixed, but includes concerning signs.
Link noted well-being scores plunged early in the pandemic before rebounding massively in 2021. He said they believe 2021 reflected “vaccine joy” and that overall, “basically 67% of people told us that their well-being was worse than it was prior to the start of the pandemic, and it’s basically stayed flat for the most part ever since. Beyond that, “if you were a woman, your scores were worse. If you were a diverse person, your scores were worse, and if you were a young person, your scores were worse.”
The importance of culture
Business leaders can’t afford to ignore the problem. SHRM’s studies emphasize the crucial role of organizational culture: When CEOs and supervisors model and codify civil behavior, trust and performance improve. Rather than issuing “gag orders” or banning difficult topics, SHRM encourages companies to clarify expectations, refine kindness, and train staff in active listening—transforming workplace dialogue from debate to discussion.
Link offered the particular example of one bit of perceived incivility: an email. He told Fortune he personally read the email in question and viewed it as a bit direct, but “part of a normal business conversation.” To be sure, it wasn’t “flowery,” but “I’m sitting there thinking, okay, what’s uncivil about this?” Link said when people report acts of incivility, SHRM asks them what that actually means. The bulk of things are terseness in an email or snippiness in oral communication. Fortunately, he added, there aren’t too many examples of physical violence.
But there was a key learning for him: Acts of incivility are “more tied to things which relate to the culture of an organization than they necessarily do to whether that in person intended to be uncivil or not.” He urged companies to be intentional about their culture and how they set expectations around it. He said SHRM calls this “cultural clarity.” Then, acts of incivility are clearer, or less open to interpretation.
“Culture matters in this idea of civil behavior and civil expectations, as does leadership,” he said.
This doesn’t mean that the culture itself is necessarily civil. Expectations are key, Link said.
“When a leader, particularly a CEO or an executive team says, ‘These are the components of our culture, whether you like them or not,’” then there’s less room for interpretation,” he said.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
