After working from home for months on end, some employees seem to have forgotten the basics of business etiquette. They’ve picked up bad habits that annoy their colleagues and superiors alike – and this has prompted several companies to sign up their workers for etiquette classes.
This phenomenon is particularly evident in the United States, where a large number of employers are imposing stricter work policies to bring staff back to the office. But returning to an in-person working environment is no easy matter, as employees have become so accustomed to the many advantages of remote working.
One of these is the dress code. “Casual every day” seems to have become the norm for many remote working employees, so much so that some no longer even deign to swap their pajamas for more professional attire before starting their working day at home.
And while you might think that casual dressers would make the effort to slip into something more formal when they go to the office, that’s not always the case. Hoodies, leggings and other casual wear have made their way into workplaces, to the detriment of suit-and-tie, pant-suit or skirt-suit ensembles.
The democratisation of work attire is not a problem in itself, since there is no correlation between wardrobe and professional success, but it does point to a certain “casualisation” of corporate life.
This, however, becomes problematic when it borders on incivility, which is why some bosses are having their employees take classes on how to behave in the workplace.
These classes are provided by specialist providers and cover a variety of topics relating to life at work. These include how to conduct yourself during video meetings, how to behave at a business lunch, or even the art of making conversation with colleagues.
“We’re all coming back together. We want to make sure we have a shared agreement about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable in the workplace,” says business etiquette trainer Kate Zabriskie, speaking to the Los Angeles Times.
Teaching employees the basics of corporate life comes at a price: the average cost of an etiquette class is US$6,500 (RM30,775), according to the newspaper. But many bosses seem willing to invest this sum to train their employees in office behaviour, with more than six in 10 companies planning to use such training this year, according to a ResumeBuilder survey.
This decision may seem surprising, but it makes perfect sense considering that politeness is a key factor in quality of life and motivation at work. Employees are far more sensitive than you might imagine to all the little indiscretions and incivilities they may encounter in their day-to-day professional lives.
Forgetting to say “hello” to a colleague or speaking out of turn at a meeting may seem trivial, but in the long run, these acts can contribute to a deterioration in the general climate of relations within an organisation.
These breaches of office etiquette can even affect the health of those who experience them, according to studies conducted in 2014 and 2015. Worse still, they could affect the productivity for 75% of workers.