While many current issues are uncontrollable – organisations may have issues killing significant value that are controllable. Huge macro issues the businesses are confronted with, do not permit businesses to tolerate such issues any more.
We have no ideal – no pressure environment to work in anymore. People are going through tremendous stress so do the organisations for survival. This creates a toxic work environment - an environment where employees find it difficult to work or progress in their careers due to the negative atmosphere created by coworkers, supervisors, or the company culture itself.
The culture of collaboration for synergy is more important than ever before. In a toxic work environment, it’s never really clear what the company culture entails. Values and beliefs are obscure and rarely discussed and practiced.
When an employee knows his role, it means they not only know what their job entails, but also what is expected of them, and what counts as a success or failure in their tasks. When the lines get muddled, a person can gradually lose sight of which tasks or behaviour help push them forward in their career.
In a healthy work environment, collective decisions are made rather than executive decisions, with input from all concerned parties. As a contrast, in a toxic work environment there is no consensus on how to solve a problem. Most managers hold on to their own perspectives. The decision comes from a higher-up, without the input or consultation of their peers who could understand and explain the situation better.
In a toxic work environment, everyone remains mostly silent, minding their own business and rarely reacting to situations or voicing opinions for the betterment of the organisation. This can cause a lot of distrust between employees and it starts emanating toxic emotions.
Damaging workplace
At a toxic workplace, the employees will often feel like their supervisors and managers use them as tools to get the job done. They are moved around from department to department, constantly changing their roles based on the task that needs to be done next. What is more, the employees are made to feel as though sick days and holidays are a hindrance to the company’s progress, rather than an opportunity for them to recharge.
A workplace rarely becomes damaging for the employees on its own, or out of the blue. There are certain factors that contribute to it. As they build up, or go ignored for a long time, or wrong types of behaviour have been consistently tolerated they culminate in a very unstable atmosphere that begins to fester.
When people don’t know what their roles are and performance culture and right type of behaviour have not been promoted to shape the culture and they are not clear on what makes them successful or unsuccessful at their job, how are they expected to excel?
Companies that fail to provide regular feedback, performance reviews or regular review meetings with their staff run the risk of having a group of people running in circles.“Work is not supposed to be fun – that’s why they call it ‘work’.”
Toxic attitude
Change management in a toxic organisation is non-existent. Even in a most critical and alarming environment, change management may be resisted. “This is how we have done things right from the beginning and we have been successful - so why change?” and “That is not how we have been taught back in the day” are two sentences often coming from supervisors who are too stuck in their ways to change for the better.
If you start to hear this more often, the chances are that employee ingenuity and autonomy are being questioned, discouraging creative thinking. And the more this happens, the sooner people will begin to feel like cogs in a machine. Unless a higher-up gets involved to question their choices, odds are you will have fertile ground for toxicity in the workplace.
Even employees themselves are a big factor in toxic workplaces. But what makes an employee so unfit, that their behaviour can cause an unhealthy work environment? It’s important to be observant and recognise the signs toxic coworkers would exhibit.
There are those that stem from emotional immaturity, such as forming cliques – taking sides and gossiping. Sometimes ‘silent rioting’ to block a progressive step. At the same time, there are also types of behaviour that toxic people are unaware of, such as oversharing. It is important to recognise and address them appropriately in a timely manner.
Unfortunately, a lot of the time, especially if you haven’t worked with such people, identifying toxic individuals will rely on trial and error. You will likely get burned a few times before learning how to spot them from afar.
Visuals of a toxic organisation
A toxic workplace can look completely indistinguishable from a healthy one, at least on the surface. While one person may identify the workplace as being toxic, for another it isn’t toxic. This happens when there is an imbalance in the treatment of employees, or because of the difference in work experience and intellectual capacity of each one. Those who have dealt with toxic coworkers, managers, or entire work environments are more likely to spot the signs sooner.
Constant pointing of fingers reveals a deeper issue – the employees are afraid of repercussions and taking responsibility. Instead of focusing on working out a solution, finding the culprit or dissecting the mistake is taken to great lengths. Toxicity in the workplace is more common than ever.
Whether it is over or subtle, it causes physical and emotional stress to the employees but also costs employers money due to drops in productivity. To combat this, we need a cool head on our shoulders, a supportive environment, but also in the workplace itself. While as one person we can’t make an entire company a better place, we can at least learn how to watch our backs and ensure our wellbeing stays intact – especially at this most difficult time.