Here’s a question you probably haven’t thought about a lot: What happens when you forget to give someone a birthday card? Or even if you get it to them late? My colleagues Michal Hodor, Liat Eldor and I decided to find out.
Yes, we know this is quirky. Yes, you should know that no taxpayer or other funds supported this study. And yes, there is a serious point behind it. The underlying question is: How trivial do issues have to be and still affect employee behavior, and ultimately, HR?
See also: Brewing cultural magic in the workplace: It just takes the right ingredients
Here’s the situation: An employer has a policy of giving every employee a card on their birthday along with a modest gift card. Your supervisor has to hand the card to you and wish you a happy birthday. The not particularly subtle idea here is to do a little something nice for you and give your supervisor credit for doing it. You might be unhappy if you were expecting it and it came late, but would you just ignore it?
It turns out this is a question with a long lineage going back to ancient Greece and the topic of insults. Aristotle notes that insults are a kind of belittlement that happens when we do not give someone proper regard—or, as we might say today, we don’t show them proper respect. We use the term “insult” and “insulting” for all kinds of behavior that could be degrading, illegal, bullying and even invasions of countries, but the appropriate use is for something pretty minor. Think of this as an issue of manners. The advice is just to ignore it, have a thick skin, don’t take it personally and so forth.
Getting a birthday card late fits this minor category. It happens often enough that greeting card companies all seem to have a special section for “belated birthday cards,” and these cards generally make light of the situation. But how do people actually react?
Recognition gone awry
We first looked at what happened in the above company by asking management their view as to why cards are delivered late in the first place. The explanation is never that it is intentional; the boss gets super busy with something else and just doesn’t have time. In fact, my co-authors did a survey of actual managers to ask them about this. They agreed they would never be late intentionally, but sometimes things get in the way. No big deal.
Ah, but what if you are the employee? Sure the boss is busy, but how long does it take to hand me a card and say, “Happy birthday”? One minute? Too busy to do that?
It turns out that when employees don’t get their card on their birthday, their absenteeism jumps 50%. Sick leave, which one can take without proving physical sickness, jumps as well, creating a significant HR problem.
Leading with ‘regard and respect’
The good news is that employees don’t seem to mind if they get the birthday card before their birthday, although it probably helps if the boss indicates she knows when your actual birthday is and didn’t just hand it to you on a random date. It also turns out that once employees get their card, even if it’s late, they do calm down, and performance goes back to normal. Read more about the article, Do Small Slights Matter?, here.
The lesson for HR here is not about birthday cards, of course (although I just sent one out late). It is that even minor things that seem trivial can seem like insults to people on the receiving end. Everyone wants, as Aristotle says, proper regard and respect.
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