Quick! If You Have These Sure-Fire Signs of a Toxic Workplace, They Are Tanking Your Team!

This is a 4 part series on the various points of a workplace culture. Find the four parts here: Workplace Culture, Toxic culture,  Tolerable culture and a Magnetic Culture.

This story might sound familiar

We were sitting with a client a couple of weeks ago, completing a review of the Magnetic Workplaces program. We’d just finished up a year with this organization and we wanted Jin and her team to identify the changes they’d gone through.

We asked first...what was it like last November?

Eduardo, the operations manager, started right away. He said, “I was ready to quit. 

Devinder, the senior accountant, jumped in, “Me too!”

Jin and the rest of the team around the table were nodding their heads. That’s right. No one wanted to be here. It was nasty!

When we asked them to describe what was happening, Jin noted that they were in a constant state of crisis and everyone felt it. 

“We were overloaded, overworked and overwhelmed,” said Jin. “It was no wonder everyone wanted to quit.”

That strain on individuals meant their worst was coming out instead of their best. Sarcasm infiltrated staff meetings. Backbiting was the norm. There was constant conflict between departments and individuals.

Kashmeer, the head of HR, said, “Sick time was off the charts. Add to that the high turnover rate, it meant there was never enough bodies.” 

“We suffered from chronic understaffing,” said Eduardo. “It felt like we were juggling shifts, clients, and responsibilities and something always got dropped. Everyone was suspicious of one another. We didn’t trust management, each other or for that matter ourselves.” 

Jin emphasized the turning point. She said, “We knew we’d hit rock bottom when the results from the staff survey came in. They were terrible! That’s when we, as the leadership team, found we were spending more time focusing on problem employees than the mission of the organization. That didn’t sit well with me.”

Finally, Eduardo summed it up. “The work was sucking the life out of us. It was either turn it around or get out.”

Jin finished, “We are so glad we decided to invest in turning it around. I remember when we met you two. It was so refreshing to hear that both of you had been in organizations like ours and found a way to make it work.”

In a TOXIC workplace, employees are actively disengaged.

This story describes a Toxic work environment. If you’ve been there, you know it well. 

A toxic workplace is one that sucks the energy out of the people who work there. It is characterized by negativity, inflexibility, distrust, lack of empathy, and high turnover. It’s unhealthy and destroys individuals and team connections. 

These organizations are ones that we find to be autocratic, ego-driven, demanding, energy-draining, disengaging, difficult to navigate, and perhaps even emotionally abusive. 

If you are in a toxic workplace, this story likely will hit you. If you’re not there now, you’ve probably been there at one time. 

DO THIS: Take a moment to scan back over the story. Note how many of the descriptors could describe your current workplace culture. Perhaps more than you’d like?

An awareness of your situation is the first step. You may see yourself in a toxic workplace, or you may be in a more tolerable one. A tolerable workplace is better than a toxic one, but not the endpoint we envision for you. Again, we want you to understand the continuum from toxic to tolerable and then to magnetic. It’s a journey. 

Next up, we’ll explore tolerable workplaces. Then following that, we will describe a Magnetic Workplace. Then, it will be time to take the steps necessary to re-engage your team. ​​