Organizational Health
Learn the five signs to watch for to distinguish the difference between a toxic environment vs. typical workplace problems.
No workplace environment is perfect, so it's important to understand that there's a difference between work with a few flaws and a toxic work environment.
A toxic work environment prevents organizational progress and creates individual misery. It can also zap productivity and motivation and reduce employee retention. The good news is that leaders and managers have control over workplace culture.
If you're wondering if you have a toxic workplace, here are five signs to watch for:
1. Rumors
In a healthy work environment, leaders intentionally and proactively share information. They are transparent about the organization’s status—the positive and the negative. On questions of strategic direction, goals, and responsibilities, they over-communicate by providing multiple ways to receive information. If this kind of communication is absent, speculation will step in to fill the gap.
Rumors are urgent speculations that employees feel compelled to share with one another. There are times when leaders may not have answers to important questions. The best approach to this situation is for leaders to be open about what they don’t know and what they are doing to fill the gap.
Sometimes, information can’t be shared and needs to be kept confidential because of privacy or legal issues. These situations are difficult, but in most cases, leaders can still explain what information they can’t share and the general reasons for confidentiality.
In a healthy organization, employees will understand their team’s goals and how their contribution matters. They will have regular opportunities to get and give constructive feedback, ask questions, and get honest answers. If you find yourself in a workplace where rumors are commonplace, you can be sure that needed communication is not happening. If rumors begin to impact motivation or work efficiency, you’ve crossed into toxic territory.
Modeling good communication is an important tool for quieting rumors. Fortunately, you can train leaders to identify information gaps and fill them.
2. Gossip
Gossip is often a companion to rumor, but it indicates a different problem. Employees sharing negative information about other employees without their knowledge or consent stems from workplace politics.
Employees are bound to have different opinions and vigorous debates about how to reach goals—and that’s actually a good thing. Arguments about the best way to proceed are not politics. Politics enters a workplace when the question shifts from what is right to who is right. The focus shifts from a shared struggle toward a common goal and becomes a struggle for power between team members.
Power struggles are so common, especially in large organizations, that many people assume they are inevitable and just part of human nature. But healthy organizations don’t work this way. Healthy organizations argue in good faith about how to reach a goal and then unite their efforts when a decision is made. They learn from failure and celebrate success together.
Gossip is a clear sign of a struggle between employees. And an organization is toxic to whatever degree its members spend energy fighting with each other instead of fighting for shared goals.
You can train leaders how to call out gossip when they see it. Teaching people to think and behave like a team is a learnable skill. You can train leaders to provide more clarity about shared goals and more space for honest arguments.
3. Micromanagement
In a healthy organization, the people making decisions are those with the best information and closest to the consequences. In most cases, this means the lowest possible level. A healthy organization also encourages each team member to try new things, make mistakes, and learn from them. Micromanagement occurs when a leader makes routine decisions that could be made by someone lower in the organization.
Micromanagement communicates a lack of trust. Teams without trust struggle to make progress and carry unnecessary overhead. When teams have trust, they are able to solve problems more quickly and reduce wasted effort. A team’s progress toward its goals is hampered to whatever degree it operates without trust.
You can train leaders to recognize micromanagement within your organization, showing them how to investigate and understand the source of mistrust. If an employee lacks essential skills, training or replacement may help address the situation. If a manager is simply reluctant to cede control, leadership training may be needed. Whatever the case, mistrust is toxic.
4. Low Morale
Low morale is never the product of circumstances outside an organization; it is always a reflection of the culture inside the organization. Healthy organizations bounce forward from challenges like funding cuts, unexpected competition, natural disasters, or inflation with teamwork, mutual trust, and optimism. People in unhealthy organizations, by contrast, can be unhappy even in favorable circumstances. Here are two personal illustrations:
In the early 2000s, I worked for a large and very profitable tech company. The money was good, but trust within the team and between divisions of the company was low. We had long stretches of mandatory 12-hour days, and we knew the projects we worked on might be discarded without warning. The day our layoff came wasn’t a shock because it confirmed what we were already feeling. Our morale was already low.
By contrast, the first business I started worked out of a tiny office space with no windows. We leaned on and trusted each other. Even when our money ran out, our last marketing campaign flopped, and we had to shut down, we were grateful for everything we had learned, for the experience we’d gained, and for our friendship. We were discouraged about the money we’d lost and the hopes that never materialized, but our basic optimism for our futures remained. Our morale was high to the very end.
Low morale is the product of bad relationships inside an organization. It happens when people don’t feel appreciated, recognized, or included. And it happens when they don’t see a future they believe in for themselves or the organization.
You can train leaders to understand that the fix won’t come from a change in circumstances. It will come when the team learns to respond to adverse circumstances in a healthy way. Strong morale emerges when individuals believe in their team goals and feel like their contribution is seen and appreciated.
5. High Turnover Rate
Healthy organizations encourage individuals to pursue their ambitions and celebrate people leaving for new opportunities. This pattern is part of a virtuous cycle that helps individuals feel valued and view their work as a positive step in their personal journey. They enjoy their work more and do better work for as long as they remain. Consequently, healthy organizations tend to see less turnover compared to less healthy peers in their sector, region, and line of work.
You can train managers to evaluate whether your turnover rate is high relative to peer organizations. If it is, you can train them to investigate whether your work environment is less healthy than it could be. Exit interviews are a good way to gather candid assessments of your work environment and a good source of ideas for improvement.
How to Improve a Toxic Workplace Culture
Intentional training is foundational to improving workplace culture. All the leadership skills required to set effective goals and build high-impact teams can be learned.
Niche Academy's unique 3-in-1 learning platform allows you to create effective and dynamic online professional development. You can easily build, deliver, track, and measure training. A platform subscription also includes ready-to-use tutorials on topics like:
- Conflict Resolution for Managers
- Understanding Implicit Bias
- Equitable Workplace Practices
- Developing Goals with Direct Reports
- Creating Feedback Loops
- Guiding Effective Conversations
And more! We are committed to providing support and guidance in creating a culture of wellbeing at work.
If you would like to explore an easy way to jumpstart your training initiatives, check out our Employee Wellbeing Training Program.
About the author:
Jared comes to Niche Academy with a love for teaching and learning. He's a self-taught software engineer and graduated from college with two teaching-emphasis degrees. He finds endless fascination in the ways that new technology changes lives and reshapes the world around him.