Transforming Workplace Culture: Navigating the Toxicity Challenge
Cultivating a Positive Workplace Culture
A positive workplace culture is critical to employee engagement and long-term business success. Astonishingly, a staggering 85% of the global workforce remains disengaged, with a substantial volume of people opting to leave their jobs due to toxic workplace environments, making toxic corporate culture the strongest predictor of attrition and turnover.
Shifting from Problems to Solutions
Despite these alarming statistics, many companies grapple with toxic cultures, often prioritising short-term gains over the supposed ‘nice to have’ focus on values and behaviours. The repercussions for organisations, however, are far-reaching, impacting productivity, innovation and company reputation. The impact on employees extends beyond those directly experiencing toxic behaviours. It manifests as a company-wide energy drain, disrupting collaboration, deteriorating relationships, affecting retention and eroding overall well-being. This ultimately impacts performance to the detriment of the individual, teams and the company.
Recognising a toxic workplace involves paying attention not only to obvious negative behaviours such as overt discrimination, bullying, and harassment but also the everyday subtle behaviours that create an environment that gives rise to, and allows, blatant toxic behaviours to take hold. These include micro-management, blame and shame attitudes, favouritism, unwarranted or excessive criticism, divisive or conflict-orientated working styles, which are often justified in ‘demanding’ environments, and underpinned by unrealistic expectations, shifting goals, and a lack of recognition.
Subtler indicators manifest through poor communication, such as lack of transparency, inconsistent messaging, rumours and gossip, poorly delivered feedback, or absence of feedback, and essentially an environment that talks about people rather than directly to them. Some of these behaviours seem too slight to be noteworthy or harmful but all of this contributes to creating a culture that destabilises people through disconnection, lack of trust, a sense of inequality, fear and insecurity, which impacts on the ability to work well, and in turn, elicits more damaging behaviour, and thus the toxic cycle of behaviour is embedded and normalised.
Leadership’s Vital Role in Cultural Transformation
Most often such behaviours are attributed to managers, yet toxic workplace dynamics are multidirectional. Bystander attitudes, gamesmanship1, golden child/teacher’s pet antics and mobbing (collective targeting of one person from any level) can be especially pervasive amongst team members who lean into the negative behaviours that the culture allows because there are few consequences and perhaps even rewards such as promotion.
Addressing toxic behaviours before they become the norm requires that leaders play a pivotal role. They set the tone for the company culture, setting boundaries of what is acceptable and allowed. Through role modelling they can explicitly encourage the desired behaviours and cascade their importance through open communication. Formal mechanisms such as surveys and forums, as well as informal space to share, can create channels for discussion and exchange. Importantly, a culture can only be nudged in the right direction when there is a commitment to action. Lofty statements, engagements and charters mean little if there is no follow through.
A Mindset Shift: From Ideal to Investment
Toxic work environments may seem intangible but in the day-to-day their impact on productivity, turnover, and talent retention has a significant effect on employee engagement and the bottom line, with higher costs than can be exhaustively measured. A shift in mindset is needed where cultivating a positive work environment isn’t just a ‘nice to have’, but is understood to be a strategic people investment that paves the way for long-term professional success for individuals, teams and as a result the sustainable business success of the organisation.
- The technique or practice of gaining an advantage or feeling of superiority over another person. ↩︎
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