Is Your Toxic Workplace Making Everything Harder?
When most leaders set off on the journey of building their workplace culture, it is with the best of intentions and high expectations for a productive and highly engaged workforce. But sometimes, toxicity is cultivated in the neglected or overlooked spaces of workplace dynamics. While we focus on getting all the things done, unchecked toxic behaviors begin to grow and expand into every aspect of the organization. When we are not intentional about culture, it happens organically; and not all things that grow wild grow well or are good for you. In fact, toxicity is a major cost of doing business, “the most obvious work-related costs are productivity and business performance.”
Getting People Engaged is Harder
There is a difference between employees who do the minimum necessary to get by and those who go the extra mile to achieve the best outcome for the customer, the team, and the organization — real employee engagement. A toxic workplace can contribute to decreased productivity by as much as 40%. Toxicity may start with things like heavy sarcasm and backbiting, social isolation, and bad manners which begin to spill over into disruptive behaviors in meetings. These types of behaviors create breakdowns within teams and make it difficult for employees to work together. According to Drew Fortin, a vice president at Predictive Index, “Toxic culture takes an emotional toll on employees. At the end of the day, employees in these cultures go home to families drained, exhausted, and negative.”
An office of drained, exhausted, and negative employees not only contributes to the toxicity but also begins to cut into productivity. Christine Porath and Christine Pearson conducted a study (with 14,000 respondents) and found that nearly half of employees “decreased work effort” and intentionally spent less time at work, while 38 percent “intentionally decreased” the quality of their work due to workplace incivility.
Getting People to Show Up is Harder
It can be more difficult to get all the things done when workers don’t show up. Research shows that toxic and excessively stressful work environments increase absenteeism and may contribute to employees getting sick more often. The CDC reports that productivity losses from missed work cost employers $225.8 billion, or $1,685 per employee, each year.
The constant stress of a toxic workplace can go beyond occasional sickness, taking its toll on employee health overall and contributing to chronic health issues that lead to increased employer medical costs and adding to the cost of absenteeism.
Attracting and Retaining Talent is Harder
In workplaces where being engaged and challenged in the work is difficult, high-performing employees often leave, feeling dragged down by under-performers. Averaged over a five year period, the annual cost of culture-related turnover was calculated as high as $44.6 billion, according to the 2019 SHRM report on Toxic Workplace Cultures. In fact one out of five employees have left a job due to workplace culture. According to the Workhuman report “ The Future of Work Is Human,” three out of five employees who have been with their company for eight years or less say they’d change employers for a more positive culture.
On top of the contribution to attrition, when employees leave positions, they may share or be asked about their experience by prospective candidates. Negative word of mouth can impact recruitment efforts, and adding on sites that share anonymous feedback can be brutal for companies.
Communicating is Harder
It is hard to be highly engaged in the work when something as fundamental as communication in the organization is compromised due to a toxic work environment. Communication represents a broad list of things but let’s consider two areas.
First, communication suffers when we don’t engage in it. One poll conducted by SHRM in the same 2019 study found that “25% of employees don’t feel secure in voicing their concerns or opinions about work-related issues.” Why might this be important? When toxicity is only showing up in small pockets of the organization, it can fester when employees don’t feel psychologically safe to surface the issues for resolution. While no one is willing to talk about the work-place issues, the toxicity can continue to erode communication. This might look like insufficient communications (or even dishonest communication), rampant office politics and backbiting, and even devolving into bullying and harassment.
“A study conducted by Russell Johnson and colleagues of the University of Michigan found that rude behavior, like sarcasm and put-downs, leads to mental fatigue. Consequently, employees had less self-control, which increased their tendency to be rude toward others.” This kind of workplace incivility may not be the same as hostile behavior, but it happens more often in the workplace hurting the company’s bottom line just the same. According to estimates, workplace incivility has doubled over the past two decades and costs company’s $14,000 per employee due to lost productivity according to a Science Daily report.
Curbing Toxicity with Values
How can an organization curb the terrible costs of a toxic culture? It all starts with company values. A strong workplace culture is based on core values that are rewarded, recognized, and enforced through policies, processes, and recognition.
A positive workplace based on core values will improve the way team members engage with each other and their customers by setting the right standards of behavior, opening the lines of communication and contributing to the level of engagement that supports highly productive teams. These highly productive teams and their supportive leadership will begin to attract talent. Building the core values into policies and processes around hiring will maintain a high bar for the team. And you don’t need an expert to tell you that people prefer to show up to a civil and productive work environment. A strong, positive culture does not guarantee success, but the opposite almost certainly guarantees failure.
About The Author
Originally published at https://www.wyld.work on February 2, 2022.
