Incivility Heating Up This Summer: Make Your Workplace a Refuge

In an era marked by increasing social discord, business leaders have a unique opportunity—and responsibility—to create workplaces that serve as bastions of civility. As we approach the 2024 presidential election, a time when societal tensions often reach their peak, this imperative becomes even more critical.

​Last month’s SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2024 (SHRM24) in Chicago attracted the world’s largest gathering of HR professionals under one roof. SHRM24 also included a separate “conference within a conference”—the SHRM Executive Network Experience (ENX).

The recent breakthroughs in AI are also ushering in an era of deepfakes—incredibly realistic (but phony) images, video, and audio that are wreaking havoc online. And as the cost and access barriers to deepfake technology fall, HR leaders will increasingly be at the forefront of dealing with this issue in workplace settings.

The responsibility for creating an inclusive workplace culture is typically pushed down to managers. Here are some often-overlooked steps that CHROs and other executives can take to drive this organizational change.