Baird, a financial services company, took the principle to the next level by codifying it into policy. Employees are informed during their orientation of the company’s “no asshole rule” — it’s even written into training material. Leslie Dixon is the head of human resource and has fired people who violate it.
“By putting it out there in print and talking about it when they’re onboarded and throughout their career, it fosters a very open conversation about behavior that’s not illegal but that can be uncomfortable,” Ms. Dixon said.
Like the team at Strategyzer, the enforcers of Baird’s policy realize rudeness isn’t an immutable trait. People aren’t fired for slip-ups. Beth Kavelaris is the director of culture integration at the company. She said she received feedback years back that helped her to rethink how she behaved.
“It was from my boss, who said, ‘You’ve got to learn to listen better, Beth,’ and I think I interrupted her while she was telling me that,” Ms. Kavelaris recalled. “I’ve gotten better. I haven’t been told that in a long while.”
Last month, Mr. Garg posted an apology to his Better.com staff. He had fired 900 people because of Zoom. “I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected,” he wrote, and he pledged to do better. The note ended with a promise that he would be transparent and share the 2022 goals.
His reckoning happened at a time when nearly all companies share the same goal: keeping people. Nobody can hit metrics if they don’t have a staff.
And many are realizing that there’s nothing that thins out a work force like misbehavior. Ms. Darrisaw, a C-Suite Coach, assists companies in assessing how they can improve their culture. “Are more people trying to leave certain teams?” she asks clients. “That often tells you what the management style is like.”
Sometimes workers can name and shame their meaner colleagues — but in other cases, that job falls to those resigning instead. This could lead to trouble for the jerks if they quit.
Source: NY Times
