Micro-irritations, major workplace fallout

Happy Thursday, everyone.

I'm Frank Richardson, an organisational psychologist observing the workplace with curiosity and care. Each week, I share insights to help HR leaders better understand the people behind the processes and build cultures where both individuals and organisations can thrive.

• Someone forwarded this? 💌Subscribe to get it fresh, every Tuesday.

• Missed an issue? 💬Catch up on past essays. 

• Curious what else we’re building? 💡Insane Media lives here. 

• Want your campaign in front of our newsletter’s community? 📌Reach out here.

This week in workplace whiplash 🌀

From AI mandates to simmering discontent, here’s what’s keeping HR on edge this week:

•  🤖 CEOs Mandate AI Use or Get Fired
  Coinbase's Brian Armstrong publicly warned engineers to adopt AI tools or face consequences. Resistance wasn’t tolerated, with some staff let go.
   👉 Times of India

• ✨ Gen Z Is Redefining the 9–5
  An HR expert argues the traditional 9-to-5 is outdated. Gen Z values outcomes over clock hours, demanding work styles that embrace flexibility and human-first culture.
  👉 Economic Times

• 📊 Companies Track AI Use, Raising Privacy Eyebrows
  Workplaces like Microsoft, Shopify, and Coinbase are rolling out AI tools and tracking who’s using them. Resistance could affect your performance review.
   👉 Business Insider

•  🚑 Bank’s AI Rollback Sets Ethical Work Warning
  Australia’s Commonwealth Bank had to reverse layoffs of 45 staff after speedily replacing them with AI voice-bots. Incoming backlash underlined the human cost of tech-first decisions.
   👉 The Australian

This week’s AI dramas prove the rule: tiny cracks in trust quickly become fault lines. And that’s exactly how micro-irritations turn into macro HR crises.

A colleague once ate my lunch from the fridge. I laughed it off, but if I’m being honest, I avoided them for weeks afterwards. Multiply that by a hundred small slights in a stressed-out workplace, and you’ve got the seeds of something bigger.

According to The Guardian, UK employment tribunals are seeing a spike in cases over what used to be brushed off as minor behaviour: sighs, sarcastic comments, or leaving someone out of a tea round. Are workplaces getting nastier, or are we simply less willing to tolerate micro-irritations?

🤝 Supported by Notion

Thousands of startups use Notion as a connected workspace to create and share docs, take notes, manage projects, and organize knowledge — all in one place.

We partnered with Notion to give you up to 6 months free of new Plus plans, including unlimited Notion AI (up to 6,000$ in value)!

Apply now

☕️ From coffee snubs to court cases

Tiny slights, like being left out of the coffee chat or an offhand sneer, aren’t just annoying. Globally, workers have less tolerance for them, and tribunals or formal complaints are being filed over what were once “harmless” workplace moments. This isn’t confined to Britain: a recent Swedish study revealed that even low-grade incivility is associated with significantly worse outcomes across health, well-being, stress, recovery, and sleep quality.

The shift is cultural and psychological, fuelled by post-pandemic tensions, remote work evolution, and rising expectations for respectful environments. What HR may dismiss as “small stuff” is increasingly becoming the source of trouble.

🧠 Why small things blow up

Behavioural science tells us these conflicts aren’t “small” when stacked on top of burnout, hybrid friction, and distrust.

• Microaggressions and micro-inequities: Even subtle slights accumulate into real stress. A meta-analysis confirms that workplace incivility, even at low intensity, is strongly linked to higher turnover intentions.

• The “broken windows” effect: Small rule-breaking normalises bigger misbehaviour. Once eye-rolls and snide remarks are tolerated, trust in the system erodes.

•  Social identity theory: Exclusion (even from the tea round) signals “you don’t belong.” Our brains are wired to treat social rejection like physical pain.

• Post-pandemic stress spillover: The American Psychological Association reports sustained stress has left workers with shorter fuses and lower tolerance for workplace incivility.

In short: micro-irritations might not be new, but their impact is amplified by the wider context of exhaustion, mistrust, and frayed patience.

🚀 What HR should do (beyond another policy)

1. Spot the small stuff before it spirals. Encourage managers to notice patterns of small slights. A quiet word early can save a tribunal later.

2. Rethink civility training. Ditch the eye-rolling compliance modules. Use behavioural nudges: structured check-ins, rotation of “low-status” tasks, and team charters that make norms explicit.

3. Measure culture with nuance. Engagement surveys won’t catch micro-irritations. Use pulse checks, open text analysis, or “belonging barometers” to detect social friction.

4. Redesign conflict channels. Make it easy to flag issues without escalating to formal complaints. Peer mediation and informal resolution forums can depower micro-conflicts.

5. Model from the top. Leaders need to show the small stuff matters. Ignoring the “eye roll in the meeting” sets the tone for bigger dysfunction later.

💬 Final thoughts

Everyday behaviour is the real culture. It’s in who’s included, who’s dismissed, and how we treat each other when no one’s watching.

Those micro-irritations might feel harmless, but left to fester they become the very tribunals, lawsuits, and cultural headaches that keep HR awake at night.

If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.

Until next week,
Frank

P.S. If you want to get a feature about your own story, reply to this email. If you’d like to reach our newsletter audience (founders, creators, and marketers), click the button below.

If you’re new here, I’m over the moon you’ve joined us! To help me craft content that’s actually useful (and not just noise in your inbox), I’d love it if you took 1 minute to answer this quick survey below. Your insights help shape everything I write.

✨ Insane Media is more than one voice

💡 Dive into our other newsletters - where psychology meets the founders, creator economy, e-commerce marketing, and AI founders.