Workplace ostracism—the perception of being ignored or excluded by colleagues or supervisors—affects 71% of workers. Extensive evidence shows it contributes to poor job performance and reduces creativity.
A new study in Scientific Reports offers a novel explanation for why workplace ostracism is so pernicious: Feeling shunned or left out by coworkers disrupts a worker’s ability to monitor progress, control emotions, and engage in other goal-setting behaviors.
The authors surveyed nearly 500 service sector workers in India to collect data on workplace ostracism, employee engagement, and job performance. The results confirmed previous studies showing that such exclusion hurts job performance and that employee engagement, generally speaking, improves it.
However, the data also showed that ostracism is equally damaging to the job performance of highly engaged workers as it is to disengaged workers, suggesting that even dedicated employees are not immune to its effects.
This may be because being shunned by coworkers directly interferes with “self-regulatory” processes like goal setting, emotional control, and attention regulation, which are key to performing under stress, the authors argue.
“Exclusion may disrupt employees’ ability to monitor and regulate their behavior effectively, as psychological resources are diverted toward interpreting and coping with social rejection rather than task accomplishment,” they write.
“Consequently, employees experiencing ostracism may find it more difficult to sustain attention, motivation, and goal-directed behavior, which can be reflected in lower [job performance].
What should be done to offset ostracism?
These findings also suggest that organizational efforts to promote employee engagement may not be enough to counter ostracism’s impact—that is, initiatives to promote worker engagement may be pointless if workers still do not feel included by their colleagues.
Instead, the authors write, companies should focus not on promoting engagement but on eliminating exclusionary behavior in the first place. While they did not directly test potential interventions, they conclude that “engagement initiatives may need to be complemented by direct efforts to identify and reduce exclusionary behaviors, strengthen communication, and promote inclusive interpersonal norms.”
The importance of “cultural fit”
This research may also help explain why many hiring managers heavily weigh cultural fit when making staffing decisions, often just as much as skill set. In many cases, they might choose a candidate with less relevant experience if they think the candidate is a team player who can adapt to the work environment over time. Technical skills can be taught; changing a person’s attitude and values to fit into a company culture is much more difficult.
But if that culture is a toxic one that ostracizes people, it’s not just worker well-being that takes a hit. Productivity takes one, too.
