Cancel Culture Within The Workplace

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Cancel culture is a term made popular by Gen-Z. It refers to the phenomenon of ‘cancelling’ a person or an organisation by withdrawing support for such person or organisation because of their words or actions which are perceived to be unacceptable or offensive. Although cancel culture has become popular on social media in the recent years, it’s not a new phenomenon including at the workplace.

The underlying psychological explanation behind cancel culture is social ostracization. Simply put, a cancelled person ceases to exist in the eyes of people. In the workplace, this social ostracization is often experienced by someone who is performing below expectations. Intentionally or unintentionally, a low performing employee is gradually cancelled within the workplace.

Let’s look at how and why this happens, the effect this has on people and what leaders and managers can do to avoid this.?

How a low performing employee is cancelled

Silent treatment

Managers start giving them the silent treatment as form of punishment. This can be seen in subtle ways like not acknowledging their presence, not addressing them during the day, assigning work through someone else rather than speaking directly to them and avoiding any direct communication.

Directing Negative Emotions Towards Them

They are often addressed with an offensive and angry attitude when they try to have a conversation. It’s common for them to be shouted at, be the recipient of sarcastic comments and in some cases, even verbal abuse from their managers.

Excluded from meetings and social gatherings

They are not invited to meetings and informal gatherings and even when they are, they are left alone, not spoken to or their views and opinions are not invited, not heard or dismissed.

Constant criticism about work and the person

Instead of constructive feedback to improve, they are saddled with constant criticism even for the tiniest things. Comments are directed at them as a person and at times even called names.

Effect of being cancelled on the employee

Overtime social ostracization at the workplace results in loss of confidence, self-esteem and self-worth. They can begin to question their own abilities and even simple tasks can become difficult for them. Without proper feedback and support to learn, the criticism and negative comments can become a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to further deterioration of work performance, continuing the cycle of criticism, unsatisfactory work product and low self-worth. Eventually, to break free from the emotional turmoil, people quit the job on their own.

If cancelling someone has such negative effects on employees, then why do people at the workplace do it?

No room for mistakes

Low performance is considered unacceptable by the manager and the team members. This mindset could perhaps be the result of the culture within the workplace place where there is too much emphasis on perfection and absolutely no room for mistakes and where making mistakes is penalised.?

Lack of emphasis on training

In cultures where there is high time pressure and emphasis on output in terms of numbers, priority is given to spending time producing that output as opposed to spending time on training people. This ultimately leads to managers believing that their job does not include training juniors but only to execute the work. In such workplaces, managers can often be heard complaining about the quality of the resources and need to hire competent people.? ???

Additional work stress and workload for other employees

Low performance of an employee adds to the workload and stress of existing employees, especially in high pressure work environments where time is of the essence. This can result in the existing employees developing negative feelings towards the low performers and even blaming them as the cause of their misery.

Inability to address conflicts

To avoid the uncomfortable experience of firing someone who is not performing at the expected level and is not the right fit for the role, some managers avoid having a conversation with the person altogether. This stems from an avoidance conflict management style, which is common in collectivist cultures. They hope that if they avoid it for long enough, the problem will go away on its own i.e. the person will quit on their own and they won’t have to carry out or be responsible for the task of firing someone.

Low emotional intelligence

People with low emotional intelligence are unable to effectively understand and manage their emotions and let their emotions guide their actions. They lack empathy to understand the situation from the other person’s point of view. They usually have an “If I can do it so can everyone else” attitude.

Time to remove cancel culture from the workplace?

Cancel culture within the workplace can have various negative effects on the mental well-being of employees. It’s important to remember that we are all human and the need to treat everyone with respect is universal and is not subject to how good or bad an employee is performing. Job descriptions need to specially emphasize the role of training for the job. Managers need to be trained in conflict management so that they don’t resort to avoidance as a conflict resolution strategy and in emotional intelligence so they can calmly have conversations with people about their mistakes at work. It’s ok to fire someone and let them go if they aren’t the right fit for the role and training isn’t helping. It just means that their skills will be better suited in another role or another organization. What is not ok is socially ostracizing them and making them feel less than human and worthless because they did a bad job. Open communication is one of the key pillars for creating a mentally healthy workplace so let’s stop cancelling people at work.

Disclaimer: The hope with this article that we re-think our actions at work and how they can affect other people. The object is not to point fingers or humiliate anyone or to say that this is the only way people are treated at work. These are just observations based on my readings, interactions and interviews with people and my own thoughts. In Adam Grant's words, I'm willing to 'Think Again' when new ideas and evidence are brought to my knowledge.