By CRL Advisory Council Member, Gerald L. Finch, Ph.D.
Respect and disrespect have a dramatic impact on engagement
Gallup’s 142-country study on the State of the Global Workplace found that only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. The bulk of employees worldwide – 63% – are not engaged and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes. Additionally, this study showed that 24% of workers are actively disengaged. The impact of this is less engagement, more employee turnover, less focus on work, and lower productivity.
In our work, The Respect Project discovered that when basic service employees and those with lower levels of education are disrespected, they reported the highest decrease in effort, commitment, enthusiasm, energy, and discretionary time than any other job category. We found that managers and highly educated employees report the sharpest decrease in engagement by leaving the organization or wanting/trying to leave, not by the same behaviors seen in the basic services and low educated employees. Younger employees show more substantial decreases in engagement when disrespected, and older employees show less decrease in engagement. Furthermore, women across all job categories report that disrespect reduces their engagement much more than men.
Why is The Respect Four Factor Theory important?
For managers to respect employees, they need to know the essential behaviors and actions that commonly generate perceptions of respect and disrespect. In The Respect Project at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, we accumulated several hundred actions and behaviors that cause employees of all principal educational levels and job positions to feel respected and disrespected. All of these actions fell into four categories of actions and behaviors. Thus, we formulated our theory: The Respect Four Factor Theory.
The Respect Four Factor Theory
Informational Respect
Informational respect is the most underrated but often the most influential way of showing respect to employees. Few managers fully understand the supreme importance of providing information and explanations that are adequate, timely, and truthful. We suspect that this kind of respect is the most impactful because when employees are provided this kind of respect, they realize that their managers must respect them to take the time to keep them informed. Conversely, when managers do not take the time to communicate, managers send the message that they do not respect their employees enough to keep them informed.
Procedural Respect
Procedural respect means that the decision-making processes are perceived by employees as being fair and transparent. For example, employee-related procedures and policies (such as working hours and recognizing good/poor performance) are considered fair. Most of us have experienced unfair employee performance evaluations and know the impact this has on our perception of disrespect and the resulting disengagement.
Interpersonal Respect
This respect pertains to employees being treated with politeness and dignity by immediate supervisors and managers. In our research, interpersonal respect was an important but the least impactful way to express respect to employees. We suspect this is because if a supervisor treats employees with politeness but fails to provide informational and procedural respect, politeness by itself seems superficial and sometimes manipulative. In contrast, the strongest way to communicate disrespect is by managers displaying emotional or physical violence. But it is essential to remember that the absence of this violence does not communicate respect!!
What about Compensation Respect?
This kind of respect (sometimes called Distributive Respect) pertains to the fairness of employees’ personal outcomes, including salaries and other forms of compensation. We were shocked to discover that that this form of respect did not appear to exist in some work situations.
As mentioned in Crucial Conversations: “Respect is like air. As long as it’s present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it’s all that people can think about.”
But compensation disrespect does exist, and it is one of the most damaging forms of disrespect. This form of disrespect will reduce employee engagement more than any other form of disrespect other than managerial emotional/physical violence. But here is the catch — compensating employees fairly and avoiding emotional/physical violence do not in themselves communicate respect, per se. Instead, these actions eliminate the leading causes of disrespect and disengagement.
Conclusion: Respect precedes engagement
Managers and supervisors must take a two-track approach to improve respect and engagement: reduce or eliminate both compensation and violence disrespect and focus on fostering informational, procedural, and interpersonal respect.
If you would like to join our efforts in researching and promoting respect in the workplace, contact the author. The author is the Co-director of The Respect Project which is actively researching respect and engagement. He is also an advisor to The Center for Respectful Leadership which is also fostering respect in the workplace.
