The worst case scenario has happened at work. Perhaps you sent a big document off to the printers with an embarrassing spelling error on the front page. Maybe you accidentally cc’d a client into some particularly scathing internal emails. Or someone vital just pulled out of a big project. Do you silently seethe and indulge in some weapons-grade eye-rolling? Or do you loudly let off a string of the most unpleasant expletives you can come up with, summoning the spirit of sweary spin doctor Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It as you go?
The latter scenario would once have been considered an unforgivable faux pas, reason enough to have you hauled in front of HR immediately. But now it might only provoke some raised eyebrows and a flurry of furtive Slack messages between your bemused colleagues. That’s because dropping the f-bomb at the office may no longer be a colossal, well, f*** up.
Last year, 30 per cent of participants in a LinkedIn survey admitted to swearing “constantly” at work. Another study found that the average UK employee hears 11 swear words a day (an estimate that would be pretty conservative in many of the offices I’ve worked in).
A spate of high profile legal cases has highlighted just how far the norms have shifted when it comes to profanities on the job, too. In 2023, a tribunal judge ruled that the phrase “I don’t give a f***” could now be considered a “fairly commonplace” office interaction. A separate unfair dismissal case made the news this month, when another judge suggested that swearing at work is more accepted in the north of England.
Yet despite these headline-grabbing examples, the idea of turning the air blue in a meeting room will probably still be anathema to some, because swearing – and the wider question of how we cause and take offence in general – is a subjective, hazy issue. One person might use “bastard” as a twisted term of endearment; another might see that behaviour as beyond the pale. So how did we get so coarse at work – and how rude is too rude when we’re interacting with colleagues?
When we’re attempting to grapple with those questions, context is important. “I think swearing, or even ideas about good manners and decorum, are all cultural artefacts that reflect people’s norms, their values, and their attitudes in a given time and place,” says Dr Alex Gapud, cultural anthropologist at employee engagement consultancy scarlettabbott.
There are some sectors that seem to have cultivated a “more expletives the merrier” approach over the years. Working in a restaurant kitchen is notoriously sweary (for a case in point, see Gordon Ramsay’s entire personal brand). So is the world of finance – you only have to watch a few stress-inducing minutes of banking drama Industry to get a taste. The art world, so very different to the City in most other respects, plays similarly fast and loose with cursing (so countercultural, darling). “The more you tolerate it, the more [swearing] you’re going to get,” says Gillian McAteer, director of employment law at legal firm Citation. “So it’s very easy for it to get out of control.”
What’s striking is that these professions have a performative side to them – it’s as if those involved feel they have to live up to a particular image in order to truly inhabit the part. Just think of Tom Wambsgans in Succession, who seemed to get more and more creative with his expletive-ridden insults as he became more enmeshed in the corporate structure of his father-in-law’s media empire.
“We tend to play roles as we believe they ought to be played,” Gapud adds. “You might have a leader who feels like they need to swear because they have an idea or norm of what ‘alpha’ behaviour is.” Wanting to fit in, he says, can be “such a powerful force” at work, “especially because being an insider or being seen as the right kind of person often gets rewarded. You tend to get promoted if you behave the ‘right’ way” – and sometimes the “right” way involves doing something otherwise considered “wrong”.
What we consider to be offensive or profane, Gapud points out, varies over time. Swearing is certainly far less taboo in day-to-day conversation than it once was. In a 2021 report from the British Board of Film Classification, which updates its guidelines around bad language in film and TV by consulting with the public, six out of 10 people said that swearing was part of their daily lives. Plus, one third of the participants admitted to cursing more than they did five years before. It’s inevitable, then, that these looser attitudes to language have infiltrated the office, helped along by a concurrent shift towards a more informal working culture, with “authenticity” as a common – if nebulous – corporate buzzword.
The BBFC’s research also highlighted a significant generational divide: 46 per cent of Gen Z said they swore daily, compared to just 12 per cent of 55 to 64 year olds. As the workforce gets younger, they’re likely to reshape office customs in accordance with their own habits. And the blurring of boundaries between our professional and private lives in the wake of the pandemic has likely had a knock-on effect too: there’s been “seepage” between how we behave at home and work, Gapud says, because we might be working remotely, or “working outside of the nine-to-five hours”.
Dr Tara Reich, reader in organisational behaviour and human resource management at King’s Business School, agrees. “I think Covid threw a lot of expectations about working culture in the air, and also created a lot of stress and uncertainty for employees at all levels, so the norms of the workplace are probably more in flux than they were before,” she says.
Swearing isn’t only an instrument of rudeness, either: we might use bad language to joke, add emphasis to a story or bond with others. “On the positive side, swearing with trusted colleagues can build connections, show authenticity and create a comfortable environment where people feel free to express themselves,” says Alex Alvarez, lead people scientist at employee experience platform Culture Amp.
Hearing our co-workers express genuine feelings in strong, unvarnished terms might even help us see them as, whisper it, fallible human beings. Swearing is a bit of a risk, and doing so makes us vulnerable; it might signal to the people around us that we trust them enough to bend the rules in their presence (of course, this is tied up in corporate power structures, too – we’re surely more likely to swear among our direct peers and office pals, rather than semi-ironically calling our boss’s boss a w***er).
But that’s not the whole story. “Excessive or aggressive swearing can be harmful – in tense situations, it may escalate conflict or create a hostile environment,” Alvarez says. What one worker deems a casual insult might be seen as totally unacceptable by the colleague who sits next to them. Telling that person that they’re overreacting or getting the wrong end of the stick risks undermining their concern and potentially leaving them feeling isolated. “Building an inclusive culture means recognising that different people have different reactions to language, and an ‘I didn’t mean to offend’ response will not help if someone feels disrespected,” Alvarez adds.
If someone’s tirades are leaving those around them feeling uncomfortable or unable to speak up, that’s a glaring issue. “If someone’s uncivil behaviour makes another person feel like their dignity has been violated or that the environment is hostile to them, then we have a problem, especially if there are protected characteristics involved [such as race, gender, age or disability],” says Reich, adding that “there’s some research that suggests that women and ethnic minorities are more likely to report experiencing incivility”.
She points to the work of US academic Lilia Cortina, who has explored the phenomenon of “selective incivility”, where rudeness is targeted towards a specific group, as “a form of covert discrimination at work”. The flip side to this, too, is that women and minorities might be more harshly judged for swearing; this, Alvarez points out, can “potentially deepen workplace divides”.
Most workplaces will have set out a policy about using offensive language, usually under the heading of misconduct, explains McAteer, but, inevitably, “the big grey area is ‘what is offensive’? I don’t think it’s as black and white as it used to be”.
“When considering whether swearing amounts to misconduct, context matters,” says Fudia Smartt, employment lawyer at Spencer West. A tribunal is likely to take into account a whole range of factors, she adds, looking at the workplace culture, whether an employer’s reputation was damaged, whether someone was provoked and “if the language has been used in the heat of the moment”.
Employers might also find themselves in tricky territory, McAteer adds, if they “have a policy, but [they]’ve not trained people on it – that is a big risk. Another massive risk is, if you’ve got a policy … but it’s not what people are doing in practice”. If an employee is dismissed for bad language, then they could argue that they were simply acting in accordance with the office norms. “They’re going to say, ‘well, you didn’t take action in all these other instances’,” she explains.
Creating a list of “banned” words, as a way of trying to make things more black and white, is unlikely to go down well either. It might come across as patronising, it’d be hard to police and, as Reich puts it, “misses the point that it’s not usually about the words themselves, but what they mean to the person who hears [them]”.
So what is the best way to navigate this undeniably tricky terrain? Alvarez has a good rule of thumb: “Ultimately, swearing in the workplace should be used with caution, limited to small, trusted groups where it won’t alienate or offend others”. If in doubt, save the profanities for your debrief with your (non-work) friends in the pub afterwards. Or, in more colourful terms, shut the f*** up until you’re well away from the office.
