Civility, Respect and Engagement at the Workplace (CREW): A National Organization Development Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs

This paper is written for individuals and organizations interested in systematically supporting the climate of civility, respect and engagement within their workplaces. We discuss an organization development program called Civility, Respect and Engagement at the Workplace (CREW), conducted at the national scale within the second largest government agency within the U.S.: the Department of Veterans Affairs. The program is based on a process-focused, client-centered approach to organizational change (Reddy, 1994; Schein, 2006), with the intent of improving group members’ experience of their shared work environment. CREW facilitators support the group members’ dialogue about the meaning of civility within their particular group and about their personal interpretations of each other’s behaviors as civil or not. CREW proceeds for at least 6 months, using trained facilitators and a variety of supporting materials and activities from the centrally maintained toolkit that is freely shared by the designers of the program. CREW has been empirically demonstrated to improve civility in participating workgroups within and outside of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Levels of civility in general and participation in CREW specifically have been connected to positive outcomes for employees and organizations in prior research. This paper overviews the operating principles of CREW, describes the process of conducting the program and briefly summarizes the results available thus far. We offer enough detail to allow individuals and organizations to evaluate how this approach may benefit them and we share suggestions on where to start if there is interest in implementing the program.

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