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Research says swearing can boost team spirit
published: Monday | October 22, 2007
Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
( L - R ) Audrey Hinchcliffe, LeahCim Semaj, Donna Parchment
Some employers may want to consider permitting the use of profanity in the workplace from time to time. It seems using a few expletives in your day-to-day communication at work could actually help build team spirit and help release steam, a recent study suggests.
The study conducted by Professors Yehuda Baruch and Stuart Jenkins of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, while not encouraging workplaces to deliberately adopt the use of profane language, says allowing employees to use it from time to time might actually help enhance productivity.
"...In many cases, taboo language serves the needs of people for developing and maintaining solidarity, and as a mechanism to cope with stress. Allowing an official 'no swearing' policy to be informally ignored in some contexts may be a sensible outcome," the researchers say.
Dr. Leahcim Semaj, psychologist and chief executive officer of the Job Bank, agrees with the findings of the researchers but indicates that employers in Jamaica would need to exercise a little more care when adopting such a principle.
"You are responsible for what goes out of the mouth, so even if you never intended it 'that way', if people are misunderstanding it, you are wrong!" Dr. Semaj explains.
Wrong place and time
"On the other hand, we can teach the rest of the staff to understand that no harm was intended. He really intended just to express what he was feeling at the time. But there is a gap between those two and I put the onus on the person who uses that kind of language ... because in the wrong place and time you can cause irreparable damage," he adds.
He says such a policy might work best with groups of people who have been working together for a long period of time as they know one another better.
Audrey Hinchcliffe, president of the Jamaica Employers' Federation, also acknowledges that there is some benefit to using expletives, but reminds the public that 'bad words', as they are more commonly known in Jamaica, are illegal.
"Unless something is done about the law, I don't know that we at the workplace can take on something that breaks the law of the land," she says.
She cautions that while using such terms provides a medium for expressing one's self, the work environment should be governed by principles that should be beneficial to all employees.
"I don't know that is something I would subscribe to. People have got to find other ways of relieving themselves at the workplace," she says.
Even though in a social context, 'bad words' do in fact appear to build community and spirit, more so among men, there is no reason to advocate for it be used more generally as means of building cohesiveness, says Donna Parchment, chairman of the Dispute Resolution Foundation.
"A substantial number of users of these words in our society don't consider it acceptable across the board. So, I would be reluctant to, given all the problems and issues and possibilities, I don't see the broader use of expletives as a way of building community in Jamaica," she says.
published: Monday | October 22, 2007
Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
( L - R ) Audrey Hinchcliffe, LeahCim Semaj, Donna Parchment
Some employers may want to consider permitting the use of profanity in the workplace from time to time. It seems using a few expletives in your day-to-day communication at work could actually help build team spirit and help release steam, a recent study suggests.
The study conducted by Professors Yehuda Baruch and Stuart Jenkins of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, while not encouraging workplaces to deliberately adopt the use of profane language, says allowing employees to use it from time to time might actually help enhance productivity.
"...In many cases, taboo language serves the needs of people for developing and maintaining solidarity, and as a mechanism to cope with stress. Allowing an official 'no swearing' policy to be informally ignored in some contexts may be a sensible outcome," the researchers say.
Dr. Leahcim Semaj, psychologist and chief executive officer of the Job Bank, agrees with the findings of the researchers but indicates that employers in Jamaica would need to exercise a little more care when adopting such a principle.
"You are responsible for what goes out of the mouth, so even if you never intended it 'that way', if people are misunderstanding it, you are wrong!" Dr. Semaj explains.
Wrong place and time
"On the other hand, we can teach the rest of the staff to understand that no harm was intended. He really intended just to express what he was feeling at the time. But there is a gap between those two and I put the onus on the person who uses that kind of language ... because in the wrong place and time you can cause irreparable damage," he adds.
He says such a policy might work best with groups of people who have been working together for a long period of time as they know one another better.
Audrey Hinchcliffe, president of the Jamaica Employers' Federation, also acknowledges that there is some benefit to using expletives, but reminds the public that 'bad words', as they are more commonly known in Jamaica, are illegal.
"Unless something is done about the law, I don't know that we at the workplace can take on something that breaks the law of the land," she says.
She cautions that while using such terms provides a medium for expressing one's self, the work environment should be governed by principles that should be beneficial to all employees.
"I don't know that is something I would subscribe to. People have got to find other ways of relieving themselves at the workplace," she says.
Even though in a social context, 'bad words' do in fact appear to build community and spirit, more so among men, there is no reason to advocate for it be used more generally as means of building cohesiveness, says Donna Parchment, chairman of the Dispute Resolution Foundation.
"A substantial number of users of these words in our society don't consider it acceptable across the board. So, I would be reluctant to, given all the problems and issues and possibilities, I don't see the broader use of expletives as a way of building community in Jamaica," she says.
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