How to keep trolls out of remote workplaces

Gustavo Razzetti, who gets hired by companies to improve their work cultures, has noticed a change since the pandemic began last year: more political brawls, more managers losing control of their employees, a curious mix of hyperengagement and lack of empathy.

“Employees are turning their cameras off, hiding behind avatars, becoming disrespectful,” said Razzetti, whose consultancy is called Fearless Culture. “They’re being aggressive among each other.”

Office conversation at some companies is starting to look as unruly as conversation on the internet. That’s because office conversation now is internet conversation. Many companies have been working online for nearly a year, with plans to continue well into 2021. And just as people are bolder behind keyboards on Twitter, they are bolder behind keyboards on workplace messaging platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack — with all the good and all the bad, but with a lot more legal liability.

Work culture experts say there are steps companies can take before the lawyers get involved. These are among them: closely monitoring large chat groups, listening to complaints, reminding employees they are on the job and not bantering with friends, and being aware that a move to a virtual workforce can expose new issues like age discrimination.

At a lot of U.S. companies, this is the first time colleagues have had to come to terms with working and socializing almost entirely online. There is likely no going back: Nearly half of the U.S. labor force is working from home full time, according to Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom. And 67% of companies expect working from home to be permanent or long-lasting, according to a study by S&P Global, which provides financial analysis.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone patted themselves on their back, like, ‘Oh, look, productivity has not fallen. We’ve transitioned to digital. We’ve done things we were seeking to do: streamline processes, move things online, decentralize decision-making.’ But they were forgetting about culture,” said Jennifer Howard-Grenville, a professor in organization studies at the University of Cambridge. “Now the reality of that has hit.”

When message boards, chat rooms and Facebook become work tools, offcolor humor is more common. Aggressive political discussions that would be out of place among cubicles now seem fine. The hierarchy of physical space disappears when everyone is a username. Confronting senior management does not require a walk and a knock on the door, and confronting colleagues does not require sitting next to them the rest of the day.

“I’ve seen bullying by text in the various kinds of internal instant messenger platforms, and we’ve seen an uptick in those kinds of complaints coming our way,” said John Marshall, an employment and civil rights lawyer in Columbus, Ohio. Harassment from colleagues in internal messaging platforms is not new, he added, but now there is more of it.

These new work tools were designed to look and feel like message boards and social media. Workers notice that and adopt similar behaviors, researchers say. The performative nature of Slack, where colleagues fuel discussions in vast chat rooms by adding emojis, for example, means frenzies grow and are hard to contain once they start.

Razzetti has a protocol for emergency work-chat situations. First, he shuts down the problematic Slack channel. Then he breaks the team up for an intervention. Colleagues are asked to reflect alone. Next, they can meet with another colleague one on one to share their feelings, then in groups of four. Finally, those small groups can begin to reintegrate into a fresh Slack channel.

Some of the professors and consultants recommend simple solutions: taking turns to talk or post in meetings, requiring silent time to read something together during a video meeting before discussing, and giving workers 90 seconds to vent about politics before beginning a politics-free workday.

“We have people fighting like teenagers online at work,” Razzetti said. “This can be a very serious thing.” So the recommendation from professionals is, basically, to treat all of us as if we were teenagers who had been fighting online.

As with anything that involves workplace communication — particularly workplace conversation in text form — there are legal liabilities. There is a big legal difference between a troll with an opinion who is an internet stranger and a troll with an opinion who can contribute to your performance review. People could sue if they believe they are being harassed.