What is Counterproductive Behavior
Did you know that water cooler chat can potentially harm your company?
Although it does not directly affect the company’s profit lost, recharging your batteries by chatting about weekends with your colleagues during busy hours can be considered as counterproductive work behavior.Counterproductive Work Behavior(CWB) is the behavior that harms the company and people in it, intentionally or unintentionally. It can be the form of bullying, gossiping, procrastination, and many other things.
Lateness and absence
Lateness is considered as counterproductive work behavior. “It’s only 5 minutes and this company won’t be bankrupt just because I’m late!” You’ve probably heard that a lot of time but being late for work is something that reduces your productivity and the overall job performance.
Water cooler chat
Chatting with coworkers may seem to be one of those useful tips to freshen up your mind. However, talking about topics unrelated to your work is better done after work. It is very important to understand that no matter how close you are with your coworker, talking about activities outside your job brings negativity to workplace ethic. The chats about hobbies and weekend dates will never be finished in 10 minutes especially when it gets more and more interesting.
The use of internet and social media
Some companies prefer to disconnect their employees from the virtual world. And still, employees manage to find their way through the use of smart phones. There is no way that you can play an online game and work at the same time. While gaming during office hour may recharge your mind, it doesn’t eliminate the fact that you still have other important things to do. This procrastination has affected millions of workers. Logging in to your Facebook account won’t help you to finish your job. It will only delay your duty.
Bullying coworkers
When a colleague disregards you for your work, it is also considered as counterproductive behavior. It involves emotional experience that may affect your productivity. To prevent bullying from happening, a company should have a discussion forum regarding the performance of each employee. It helps workers to explain how the insulting has impacted them. Other counterproductive behaviors of this type include sexual harassment and violence at work.
Gossiping about company issue with customers
While it seems great that you want to maintain a close relationship with your customer, talking about the company confidential issue with the customer can bring an unwanted impact. No matter what kind of work you handle, you are the company’s representative. Talking to customers about taboo topics is a single bad choice to destroy your integrity.
Counterproductive work behavior is similar to a culture that has been going on for years worldwide. The behaviors can have severe consequences that companies should not over looked. Company has to take steps to reduce the risk by regularly monitor employees’ performance. You can’t fully blame the workers as many factors can contribute to the presence CWB. For instance, the lack of reward and perks are two important elements of which employees often complain about. And the most important of all, employer is the one who should set examples to the employees.
