Abstract: Workplace Incivility, Sexual Harassment, and University Employee Job Outcomes (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Schedule:

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Independence BR G, ML 4 (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

Allison Brachmann, M.Ed., PhD candidate and Research Assistant, Rutgers University

Sarah McMahon, PhD, Associate Professor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Rachel Connor-Hunt, PhD, Postdoc, Rutgers University

Julia Cusano, PhD, Research Specialist, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Background & Purpose

Workplace incivility (WI) and sexual harassment (SH) are major problems in the workplace, including academia. Social workers have a critical role to play in prevention, response, and research related to these key issues, as is outlined in the Grand Challenge to Build Healthy Relationships to End Violence. Few studies have examined the overlap of WI and SH, and how the co-occurrence might exacerbate the deleterious effects of each form of harm.

This study examined the effects of experiences of WI, using the Workplace Incivility Scale (Cortina et al., 2013), and SH, using a modified version of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire-Department of Defense (SEQ-DoD). Logistic and ordinal logistic regression were used to investigate the research questions in the study, including the relation between the individual and co-occurrence of WI and SH and employment outcomes, including job satisfaction, sense of community (SOC), and whether participants had seriously considered leaving their job.

Methods

Data were collected using a survey tool based on the validated Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative (ARC3) Campus Climate Survey Instrument. The cross-sectional survey was administered online via Qualtrics over a period of six weeks at a large mid-Atlantic university at the start of the Fall 2022 semester.

The analytic sample (n=4,239) consisted of 68.7% staff and 31.3% faculty. Logistic and ordinal logistic regression were used to estimate the effects of WI and SH on job satisfaction, SOC, and the likelihood of participants having seriously considered leaving their job.

Results

Results indicate that when controlling for demographics, having experienced both WI and SH is associated with greater likelihood of having considered leaving the university as compared to participants who experienced neither WI or SH, just SH, and just WI (p<.05). Participants who experienced both WI and SH reported significantly lower job satisfaction than those who experienced neither WI nor SH or who only experienced SH (p<.001). Finally, participants who experienced both WI and SH reported significantly lower SOC as compared to participants who only experienced SH or neither WI nor SH (p<.001).

Conclusions & Implications

These results show that university employees are experiencing multiple types of harm known to create a hostile work environment, and the effect on job outcomes of WI and SH in combination is often worse than either alone. Prevention, intervention, and support resources for WI and SH are typically designed separately from one another and WI often has not been recognized as an impactful form of harm, but these results suggest that WI and SH both need to be addressed as inextricable from one another. These results have implications for the way we measure, provide support for, and program around the prevention of WI and SH.