Love is the soil that fosters growth of God’s creation and practically anything worth keeping. The nurturing ability of the creator and His very thought process, in detailing the purpose of each creation and equipping it with the requisite resource coupled with the safe environment to thrive, engineers more achievements and fulfillment than any other ability necessarily can.
Born out of love, man cannot also thrive in a place he reckons to be detrimental and averse to his growth, and so it is with every single thing that initiates the process of his survival. From home, to church and even more importantly to the corporate space where all talents are utilized for the gain and the greater good of humanity, much more love and tolerance is needed – especially from the very people who are the originators, pioneers and CEOs of those establishment.
Uncompromisingly, relationship is a partnership and both leaders and employees must collaboratively work together for the common good of the organization and the world has evolved so much from what it used to be. Information which are fresh become stale in a matter of seconds as there’s a round-the-clock churning of information globally and what’s in vogue suddenly becomes passé. Employers have over the years also evolved in their practices, and depending on where you sit and view matters, it could be for the better or worse.
The Unpopular Toxic Workplace Conversation
Corporate buzzwords, whether good or not so good crop up every time and the one which resounds in the offices and during lunchbreaks have always been the word ‘toxic’. Describing the intolerant, unaccommodating and sometimes abusive nature of the work environment, employees have registered their disdain over its impact on their work output, personal and career growth and moreover their overall health.
Yes, employees do cry a lot of ‘wolf’ sometimes and fuss over a lot of things, but the question which should nudge the minds of leaders is which elements of culture are so awful that they qualify as toxic? A staff might in an exaggerative manner gripe about an old-school or bureaucratic culture, but is that enough for him to feel downright panicky and anxious as he gets to work in the morning? While this may be disregarded, the very state of the employee at that moment must not be taken lightly. The distinction between a culture so awful that it qualifies as toxic versus one that’s merely irritating must equally be set straight.
Employee Indicator For Toxicity
Going to the crux of the problem and what causes employees to kick up a storm about their comfort and discomfort in an organization is crucial. There are always those signs, actions they deem a low blow to their self-esteem and professional outlook which will make them unresponsive to a supervisors call to action and reform.
While this may not be exhaustive of the causative factors of toxicity, the feeling of being disrespected on any level is a deal breaker at work, but has the largest negative impact on an employee’s overall rating of their corporate culture and on any single topic. Surprisingly, mentioning disrespect has a slightly stronger negative impact on the culture rating than when an employee comes right out and describes their culture as toxic.
In research by MIT Sloan Management Review, it found that respect or the lack thereof — was the single strongest predictor of how employees as a whole rated the corporate culture. This further analysis demonstrates that whether you analyze culture at the level of the individual employee or aggregate to the organization as a whole, respect toward employees rises to the top of the list of cultural elements that matter most.
Equally, ethics, like respect, is a fundamental aspect of culture that matters at both the organizational and individual levels. The topic unethical behavior captures general comments about integrity and ethics within an organization. The most common terms in reviews classified under this topic include “ethics,” “integrity,” “unethical,” “shady,” and “cheat.” Under a related topic — dishonesty — employees described dishonest behavior in dozens of ways, including “lie,” “mislead,” “deceive,” and “make false promises,” as well as adjacent terms that suggest shading the truth, such as “smoke and mirrors” and “sugarcoating”.
Moreover, SLOAN believes that the topic regulatory compliance includes comments in which employees explicitly discussed their employer’s failure to comply with applicable regulations. “Frequently mentioned regulations include the Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, which protect workers’ safety on the job, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which safeguards sensitive patient information.”
Nearly 10% of employees in the sample made a comment related to teamwork or collaboration in their Glassdoor review. Employees frequently grumbled about uncooperative teammates or the lack of coordination across organizational silos. Comments about friction in coordination, while common, have a very modest impact on how employees rate their corporate culture. These run-of-the-mill frustrations are not clear warning signs of toxic culture.
Consequently, when employees talked about colleagues actively undermining one another, their comments strongly predicted a negative culture score. The 1% of employees who cited a cutthroat culture employed a vivid word to describe their workplace, including “dog-eat-dog” and “Darwinian” and talked about coworkers who “throw one another under the bus,” “stab each other in the back,” or “sabotage one another”.
Abusive management was also among the top toxic traits in workplace likewise the hostile behavior toward employees, as opposed to a boss who has a bad day and takes it out on team members. The most frequently mentioned hostile behaviors in the sample are bullying, yelling, or shouting at employees, belittling or demeaning subordinates, verbally abusing people, and condescending or talking down to employees.
Cost Implications Of A Toxic Organization
Every organization, as any other living thing, is highly dependent on growth in one way or the other. Companies equally must drive profit as a litmus test for growth and the very body parts who must work seamlessly have a bone to pick with the top office and end up grinding the whole productivity pace to a snail movement if not a halt. It is imperative for employers to understand that they cannot wholly survive without the input of the staff, even though, they cut the cheque and are replaceable. They must bear in mind that once replaced, the company may lose months of profits and peak productivity training and settling in the new recruit.
According to a 2022 study in the MIT Sloan Management Review, toxic work cultures came up as the top driver of employee attrition, which is well above job insecurity or lack of recognition for performance. The report indicated that the leading contributors to toxic work cultures included failure to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), workers feeling disrespected, unethical behavior, among others.
Meanwhile, toxic culture, as reported in an article as well was the single best predictor of attrition during the first six months of the Great Resignation, which is ten times more powerful than how employees viewed their compensation in predicting employee turnover. As such, the link between toxicity and attrition is not new: By one estimate, employee turnover triggered by a toxic culture cost U.S. employer nearly $50 billion per year before the Great Resignation began.
Also, in Glassdoor reviews, employees criticize their corporate cultures for hundreds of flaws — including risk aversion, excess bureaucracy, insularity, and an impersonal feel, to mention just a few. Meanwhile, in a study from the Society for Human Resource Management, 1 in 5 employees left a job at some point in their career because of its toxic culture. That survey, conducted before the pandemic, is consistent with findings that a toxic culture is the best predictor of a company experiencing higher employee attrition than its industry overall during the first six months of the Great Resignation. What this means is that the cost of replacing an employee who quits can total up to two times their annual salary when all direct and indirect expenses are accounted for.
The loss of employees now is the least of a company’s problems as they’ll also struggle to replace workers who jump ship. Over three-quarters of job seekers research an employer’s culture before applying for a job. In an age of online employee reviews, companies cannot keep their culture problems a secret for long, and a toxic culture is by far the strongest predictor of a low review on Glassdoor. This means that having a toxic employer brand makes it harder to attract candidates.
Other costs of a toxic culture are harder to quantify but can still add up. Extremely disengaged employees are nearly 20% less productive than their engaged counterparts because they put in less effort and miss more days on the job. Nearly half of employees who felt disrespected at work admitted to decreasing their effort and time spent at work.
Nothing is more pertinent to an organization than its hard-earned reputation. In this case, a toxic work environment can deal a fatal blow to the credibility of a company.
Among U.S. CEOs and CFOs surveyed, 85% agreed that an unhealthy corporate culture could lead to unethical or illegal behavior. For example, after fraudulent sales practices at Wells Fargo were exposed in 2016, the bank paid billions of dollars in fines and lawsuits and saw its corporate reputation suffer the largest single-year drop in Harris Poll history.
Curtailing Toxic Culture In Corporate Space
There’s always high optimism at the prospect of opportunities, growth and achievements employees have when they join a company. Expectedly, they anticipate finding a culture that is inclusive, respectful, ethical, collaborative, and free from abuse by those in positions of power. Not only are these baseline elements of a healthy corporate culture, they are also what companies typically promise in their official core values. In light of this, it is an act of prudence for leaders, supervisors and those who majorly call the shots in the corporate space to deal with employees in a measured, professional manner. Included in a companies’ core values are collaboration which ranked second, respect fourth, and diversity and inclusion ninth.
This means that when corporate culture fails to deliver on these fundamental commitments, employees understandably react with something stronger than annoyance or disappointment. Therefore, highlighting the elements of toxic culture in an organization can help leaders focus on addressing the issues that lead employees to disengage and quit.
Leaders will dissipate their effort and attention if they try to improve every aspect of corporate culture that some employees find irritating. In its place, they should focus on addressing the core issues that cause employees the most pain and lead them to disengage, bad-mouth their employer, and eventually quit. Do not be the leader who is always about the numbers, but also care about the interest of the employees and how they feel.