What is a toxic work environment?

Workplace toxicity is when a company has an overwhelmingly negative culture with unsatisfied, unhappy employees.

Toxic work environments and the employees in them often demonstrate negative characteristics, such as:

• Bullying
• Distrust
• Othering or labeling
• Creating in-groups or cliques
• Pessimism
• Making disparaging remarks about colleagues and leadership
• Lack of employee engagement 

Some toxic work environments exist for multiple reasons, while others are due to the behavior of a few employees. 

Related: Employee Complaints: Properly Listening to Team Members

What impact does a toxic work environment have?

Toxic work environments have tangible effects on your company and its workforce.

Examples of the outcomes of a toxic workplace include: 

• Low productivity: Employees in a toxic workplace rarely support their colleagues, volunteer to help with projects or go over and above. Instead, employees aim to finish their work as quickly as possible and limit interactions with others. 
• High turnover: Many toxic environments experience high turnover, as employees lose satisfaction with their position and look for work elsewhere.
• Increased illness and absenteeism: Employees can suffer mental and physical health effects that cause them to take more sick days and miss more days of work than they would in a healthy environment. 
• Poor reputation: Your company could develop a reputation for having a toxic work environment, making it a challenge to hire highly qualified employees. With online review sites and social media giving employees a platform to air their grievances, damage to reputation due to toxic work environments is rising. 
• Decreased mental health: Your employees could suffer from increased depression and anxiety, which may affect their productivity and work products. Workplaces that fail to recognize the reality of these illnesses could risk alienating upcoming generations, who are highly educated and aware of mental health.
• Poor production quality: Unhappy employees are less likely to submit high-quality work products, decreasing the overall quality of your company’s goods or services.  

Signs of a toxic work environment

Workplaces can become toxic when employee experience isn’t prioritized. With older companies, it might be a simple case of updating outdated policies and procedures. In other cases, toxic work environments might require a complete realignment of company values and leadership practices. 

In today’s economy, businesses may have to compete to hire and keep top-performing employees. Workers have more choices about where they work than ever, and companies that prioritize employee experience have a clear advantage. The idea of a job for life is less prevalent with Millennials and Gen Z, and it’s often the most productive employees who won’t tolerate toxic culture. 

Look for these signs to see if your company’s environment is toxic:

• Employees disregard company values.
• Employees are unsure what their roles include and what tasks they should perform.
• A small group of people makes decisions for everyone in the company with little or no employee input.
• Employees feel the company doesn’t consider personal feelings important.
• Burnout is commonplace.
• Individuals avoid solving conflicts that grow into significant challenges.
• Workers gossip and discuss issues among themselves, but not with leaders.

Signs of a toxic employee

The saying “one bad apple can spoil the bunch” is relevant to workplace culture. Sometimes, a small group of toxic employees or a single toxic employee’s attitude can cause negative repercussions throughout the entire organization. If leadership isn’t taking active steps to instill the culture they want to see, employees may be easily influenced by opinionated naysayers. 

Look for these signs of a toxic employee:

• Displays a negative attitude
• Refuses to take responsibility for their actions
• Gossips about colleagues or supervisors
• Actively tries to or succeeds in undermining their coworkers or their team
• Isn’t productive while at work
• Blames others and constantly points out faults of people around them
• Uses company messaging or phone systems regularly for personal communication
• Shares confidential company information on private social media channels
• Harasses or bullies their colleagues 

Causes of toxic culture 

No workplace is perfect, and employees, leaders and teams may display the above traits from time to time. However, if that behavior is pervasive, leadership must take action. Unless a single employee is the root of the hostility, senior leadership should examine the culture they’ve cultivated. In most cases, lack of recognition, unclear communication, elitism, favoritism and lack of a code of conduct are root causes.

Other common influences include: 

• Company goals are unclear and obscure.
• Employees feel they have little autonomy.
• Staff feels the company considers them a commodity, rather than important members of the organization.
• Company leadership is not transparent with the employees about decision-making or company direction.
• Internal company communication is rarely clear or inclusive.

How to avoid a toxic work environment

As a company leader, you have the power to create and sustain a positive, healthy work environment. Use the tactics below to avoid or improve a toxic work environment.

Provide praise and acknowledgment

Praise and acknowledge excellent work. Employees are infinitely more likely to go the extra mile if they know their work will be seen, appreciated and valued. If high performance isn’t recognized, there’s less motivation to repeat it. 

If your company is highly competitive, consider highlighting a different employee’s achievements each week to ensure everyone on the team or in the company feels recognized and appreciated for the work they do. To foster healthy competition, you might consider introducing an incentive program and providing rewards to top performers each week or month.  

Implement mentoring

Establish a mentoring program to help new, underperforming or ready-for-promotion employees build on their skills. Provide perks for established brand ambassadors to incentivize them to participate. Not only will the scheme unilaterally improve performance, but it also helps the team foster new relationships, improve communication and collaborate effectively.  

Treat everyone fairly and professionally

Ensure you treat all your employees as professionals. As a company leader, it’s best to avoid establishing personal relationships with any employees who report to you. Instead, treat all employees the same to demonstrate equity and professionalism. 

Model appropriate behavior

Show your employees how you expect them to behave at work and with each other by modeling appropriate behavior yourself. Train your leadership team to do the same. Employees look to leaders to set an example and tend to follow the status quo. When leaders exemplify the changes they want to see, employees follow suit. It’s also much easier to provide constructive criticism when the team can’t point to leadership as setting a poor example. 

Request feedback

Ask for feedback from your employees at regular intervals using anonymous surveys and one-on-one interviews. Work together to come up with ideas and suggestions for improving company processes and procedures, and seek suggestions to improve company culture and work-life balance. 

Address concerns

If employees bring concerns to your attention, take action. Do what you can to rectify the situation and ensure the employee feels heard and supported. When employees see that you’re willing to help resolve problems, they’re more likely to work productively and stay with the company. You’re all on the same team, and it’s important to actively demonstrate this to the workforce.

A toxic work environment can cause difficulties for employees and harm your company’s health. Regularly assess corporate culture to ensure your employees feel safe and respected at work. Make sure you have an up-to-date employee handbook and code of conduct, and prominently display and reinforce core values. Taking steps to rectify toxicity in your organization can go a long way to improving employee well-being and boosting productivity. 

Frequently asked questions about toxic work culture 

Why is it important to have a positive work environment?

Negative environments tend to cause stress. Contrary to many people’s understanding, stress is a physical condition that manifests in the nervous system. When people’s stress levels are elevated, productivity is more challenging and workers are more prone to illness. A healthy, happy workforce is more productive, and you’re less likely to have high turnover rates. Employees who feel like you’re on their side are more likely to have a personal investment in delivering results for your company. Cultivating a positive work environment is a win-win situation. 

What are the business outcomes of a toxic environment?

The most commonplace undesirable business outcomes toxic workplaces can cause are silos and cliques. Divided workplaces tend to make onboarding and retaining new workers challenging, leading to stagnation. When best practices aren’t regularly updated and company culture isn’t prioritized, innovation and creativity are stumped. In an increasingly fast-paced and people-led economy, stilted workplaces are likely to be less profitable than positive, open-minded environments.