Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Taste the forbidden fruit of knowledge. The Last Show with David Cooper. A late birthday card at work. It sounds harmless, right? Well, new research says it can tank your morale. It can spike absenteeism and it can kill productivity because sometimes the smallest workplace slights can hit you the hardest.
We're going to talk about workplace slights and the impact they might have on you with professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania, Peter Capelli, who's done research in this area. Peter, welcome to the show.
Chapter 2: What are workplace slights and why do they matter?
Thank you. I love that you studied workplace slights. I just have to ask, what got you so motivated to research these?
You know, research in these kind of topics, business management, it's not like we're studying cancer, you know, where there's a clear program.
Chapter 3: How can a late birthday card impact employee morale?
We know what the goal is, cure cancer. We're just at least maybe me pick particularly because of attention issues. You know, something appears to be interesting. Poof. There you go. So we were studying, generally looking at employee performance in the context of organizations, and we stumbled upon this place that had collected, for reasons that had nothing to do with us, data on this.
That is, they could actually see when birthday cards were handed out to people. It was collected by the center of the corporation and They had a rule. Basically, the supervisors are supposed to give it to you. And they were serious about that. The idea of handing it to the person and saying happy birthday was part of the whole deal. It wasn't sticking it in their pigeonhole, you know.
And it just so happened that they also collected when the cards were actually delivered. And then you could see what happened afterwards. And poof, that's what we found.
From a management perspective, a late card at work, it feels almost comically small. Yeah. How did employees react to getting that card late?
Well, on the comically small side, you know, there has been a lot of research. There is a stream of research, not on birthday cards, but on things that irritate people about their bosses in organizations, right? And not surprisingly, if the issues are big, it's not a big shock to discover it really affects people's performance. Basically, they're kind of trying to get back at you, right?
So the employer treats you badly or treats you like a poor performer. They say, okay, I'm going to be a poor performer, right? or you've taken something away from me, I'm going to say, all right, I'm going to take something away from you. And that might be my effort, or it might be not paying attention, or it might be taking pencils home.
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Chapter 4: What motivated Peter Cappelli to study workplace slights?
There's all kinds of little things like that.
Wait, wait, wait. Stealing office supplies, that's one of the great joys of working for a big company. That's my understanding.
Yeah. Oh, by the way, just for your listeners, there are these things called honesty tests that they give people for hiring. And that is one of the questions on it is, is it okay to take home office supplies? And the correct answer, by the way, is no.
Oh, really? Okay.
That's the correct answer.
Good thing I'm not at a big corporation anymore.
Or applying for a job, right? So that's the logic of this, I think, is that, you know, you do something to employees they don't like, they find ways to get back at you. What is quirky here, as you say, is that this is a pretty common thing. If you go to gift card and birthday card companies, you know, Hallmark and all the big names, they've all got special sections on belated birthday cards.
That means they assume that a lot of people are going to forget to do it and they're going to do it late. And the belated cars always kind of, you know, just make fun of it, you know, make fun of yourself. So it's portrayed as something really light and simple. And that's partly what was the pitch of this paper to the journals was how low could you go and it still have an effect on employees.
And as you say, what's interesting here is this seems pretty trivial. And yet it still matters. That's the interesting thing, right?
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Chapter 5: What surprising data did Cappelli's research uncover?
And I get that card a day late. How am I likely to respond? Am I more likely to not show up at work? Am I more likely to not be very productive and check Facebook while I'm at my desk? What is the effect of these slights at work?
Yeah. So the only thing we could really measure, this is retail context, so you can't, it's not like they're selling stuff or things like that. We have lots of different performance measures, but you could look at their absenteeism and you could also look at, because they had some control over how many hours they worked, did they pull it back? And the answer was absenteeism jumped up a lot.
The number was 50%, which sounds unbelievable, somebody told me, but You know, if baseline absenteeism is one day and you move to two days, that's 100% increase, right? So it starts from a very low number. So that's why it's a big percentage increase. But absenteeism was up and people withdrawing hours, basically, I don't want to be around so much, right?
So those are the two measures that we saw. And I think the interesting question about this, so we asked the company, you know, the employer, why would these cards be late? And they said, well, it's not on purpose. The boss probably just got busy or forgot, which makes it seem really trivial and forgiving, right? Forgivable. Yeah, no malicious intent. No malicious intent.
However, if you're the employee... And you're thinking about this and you're thinking, how much intent do you need to just hand me my freaking card? How busy could you be and not take that one minute to just say, congratulations, David, happy birthday. That's all you got to do. Takes 20 seconds. And you couldn't do that. So that's the way the employees see.
No, when people say I'm too busy, I had too much going on. It's like, no, no, that's not exactly what happened. You just didn't prioritize it and be honest about that. So I suppose it's perceived a lot different than these employers intended.
Right. And I think that is the lesson for us, you know, is to put yourself, if you're a manager, in the shoes of your subordinates or in any kind of relationship with power like this. Put yourself in their shoes and they know they're supposed to get this card and they know the policy and they know part of it is about trying to build a little rapport between the boss and the employee.
And they can't even do that. And if you look at it that way, then it's maybe not quite so surprising, right?
What could be some other things that we could put in this bucket of workplace slights? Like I go to the coffee machine and grab three coffees. I've got four co-workers.
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Chapter 6: How do employees typically react to workplace slights?
Can that really avoid problems like this?
Well, it avoids this problem for sure. I think the broader lesson is think about it from their perspective, right? Which is always a simple thing to say, but if you just stop and do it for a minute, it works reasonably well. Or for people who are older, you just say, could you imagine, remember back when you were a new hire? And how did you think about your boss then?
Boss was like this sort of godlike figure, right? And they're ignoring you. They speak to everybody but you in the morning. Well, suddenly you're trying to figure out, I'm getting fired. So putting yourselves in their shoes is probably the best thing we can do here.
I don't have the view I'm about to say because I'm a strong believer in the principle of treating others the way you'd like to be treated. But there might be people out there reading this and thinking employees are just too sensitive these days. Just suck it up. What would you say to someone with an opinion like that?
Well, why? Why should they? I mean, what are you gaining from asking employees to just suck it up? The fact that you don't have to speak to them in the morning because that's a big time saver and that's a big productivity improver. It's not right. So These are things that Aristotle was describing, we would call it, as questions of manners, really, right?
So, you know, I want to be intemperate and ill-mannered as a boss. Why? So you could say, well, employees should forget that. That's true. But as a boss, you should forget it too, right?
Well, Peter Capelli is a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter, both thank you for being here and happy belated birthday. Yeah, thank you. It was September, but good try. I was close. The world is changing. From the misuse of AI and the rise of deepfakes to the dangerous spread of misinformation, it's getting harder for Canadians to separate fact from fiction.
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