Wake-up call: Over 80% of workers are subjected to passive aggression

Put a finger down if you’ve ever been passive-aggressive at work. Don’t feel too bad—we’ve probably all been there.

Roughly 83% of workers say they’ve received a passive-aggressive email or message at work, while 44% admit to being passive-aggressive, according to a recent survey of 1,006 Americans by language-learning platform Preply.

Whether employees are returning to the office and have forgotten how to be profesh, or working from home and have forgotten there are real people on the other side of their computer screen, HR professionals can spot passive-aggressive communication, learn from it, and nip it in the bud.

You didn’t read my email. Of all the corporate lingo like “circle back” and “land the plane,” “per my last email” takes the cake as the most passive-aggressive phrase used in work communication, according to Preply’s study, followed closely by “correct me if I’m wrong,” then “as previously mentioned.”

“[Per my last email] kind of insinuates that the person is not paying attention to their job. They’re not putting in the effort to carefully comb through what is being asked of them,” said Rachel Perez, a media relations associate at North Star Inbound, a digital PR agency that partnered with Preply to conduct the survey.

“I definitely think that plays into a big factor of why people see [per my last email] as the number. 1 most passive-aggressive phrase,” Perez told HR Brew. “Compared to something like, ‘Just a gentle reminder,’ or ‘I thought I would bring this to your attention.’”

Hey, I’m talkin’ here. As a sixth-generation New Yorker, Deborah Grayson Riegel, a leadership and communication expert who’s taught at Wharton and Columbia Business Schools, recognizes how New Yorkers, for example, often speak quickly and, because of this, can be seen as passive-aggressive to folks from outside the city.

“Number 1, as an HR person, is to think about [how people speak]  through a cultural lens, through a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens, which is: ‘Wow, we have a different communication style here, and there are lots of things that contribute to it,’” she said.

If employees are being passive-aggressive, Grayson Riegel said HR pros should consider the many reasons why someone might seem this way, in general or in the moment.

“If you think about passive-aggressive behavior, [it] typically happens when somebody isn’t being direct in sharing a negative response,” she said. “There may be a whole host of reasons why you’re not being direct, which could include the culture in which they were brought up, that’s certainly something, or how they were raised in their family.”

Grayson Riegel said passive-aggressive communication can also be a reflection of a company’s culture or an employee’s manager and/or team, and as an HR pro, it’s important to be considerate of the many different factors that can be the root cause.

“If I [as a manager] have created a condition where it is unsafe for you to say ‘no’ to me, it is unsafe for you to push back on me, unsafe for you to tell me how you’re really feeling about something, you, as a communicator, may not have a lot of options,” she said.

It’s all interpretation. If an employee’s passive aggression is obstructing the work and comfortability of their coworkers, Grayson Riegel suggested managers and HR leaders provide feedback on their behavior, not their communication.

She suggested examples like: “I noticed that when I asked you to do something, you oppose what I’m telling you,” or “I noticed that when I give you a task to do, where you have expressed that you don’t want to do it, you do it, but you return it to me with mistakes.”

“When giving feedback to somebody who behaves defensively, the worst thing that you can say to them is that they’re being defensive,” she said. “Defensive is how you are interpreting a set of behaviors, so passive aggressive is an interpretation of a set of behaviors. It’s not a behavior itself.”