Creating a Positive and Healthy Work Environment

I've got some news. We're in a civility crisis according to Weber Shandwick, the firm who runs a Civility in America poll each year. Consistently, their survey shows that about 75% of us think we live in a cruel world full of incivility and aggression. Just look at the business landscape. Harassment and discrimination complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission go up year after year. A certain airline asked the police to forcibly remove a paid customer. The media is exploding with stories of sexual harassment and the high-powered people who got away with it.

You might be thinking this stuff will never happen at your company. But I guarantee all of the organizations out there with negative behavior never saw the lawsuit or media attention coming. The fact is, organizational culture dictates our behavior. Leaders who let these things happen are caught up in their business and the numbers instead of the importance of people. And HR reps who are aware of problems and the people who engage in these behaviors get caught up in their roles in the organization and make bad decisions as a result.

So you have to change your culture and this course will help you do that. My name is Catherine Mattice Zundel, and I have been studying negative workplace cultures and how to reverse them since 2004. I've written two books about solving workplace bullying, and I've worked with clients ranging from Fortune 500s down to small businesses. This course will define bad behaviors and discuss how they work as a social phenomenon. We'll discuss the cost of negative cultures and the ROI of positive ones.

From there I'll take you through the process of creating a positive workplace, including conducting a survey, creating a Culture Committee to help, developing a vision and core values, and a strategic plan for culture change. It's a leader's moral and ethical responsibility to create an environment where people thrive. Think about the impact you can have on your community if your people go home in a positive state. They will carry that into their families, and their family will take that out into your community.

Send your employees home unhappy and angry, and the opposite will happen. Besides, if you take care of your people, they will take care of you.