While most organisations strive to offer an organisational culture where employees feel a sense of belonging and they can thrive, too often we hear stories of the impact of toxic working cultures on employees, companies’ reputations and even financial performance. Is it possible to turn these workplace cultures around?
Having a positive organisational culture drives engagement, retention and even innovation at work.
Employees who feel like they can thrive in a business tend to be more productive and loyal, and a reputation for having a healthy organisational culture can help to attract new talent.
But sometimes the opposite happens, and workplaces become toxic environments where employees feel they can’t speak up about their concerns, or take more days off because the environment has an impact on their mental health.
What is a toxic working culture?
According to the CIPD, a key dimension of organisational culture is “safety climate”. This concerns whether employees feel their employer’s policies and practices contribute to their safety at work: for example, whether an organisation responds fairly to complaints.
In a toxic working culture, employees do not feel psychological safety and in turn may not feel they can speak up about incidents of toxic behaviour or unfairness, or perceive that management does not take such concerns seriously.
Toxic behaviour could include sexual harassment, bullying, microaggressions against minority groups or “banter” that oversteps a line of acceptability. A survey by FlexJobs found that a toxic culture was the number one reason people quit jobs in 2022.
A recent survey by advisory company Capterra found that the shift to hybrid working since the pandemic has reduced the incidence of toxic behaviours, with 35% saying gossip is much less prevalent and 19% saying sexism had reduced.
What are some examples of toxic working culture?
Unfortunately, stories of toxic working culture abound in recent years, partly due to movements such as #MeToo that inspired victims of sexual harassment to come forward with reports of such behaviour, and more scrutiny into the health of organisational culture in general.
Business groups like the CBI, unions including the Royal College of Nursing and the TSSA, even political parties such as Plaid Cymru, have all faced scrutiny recently, alongside NHS trusts, the fire service and academic institutions such as Imperial College.
One of the most high-profile examples of toxic working culture coming to light is the Metropolitan Police, after the convictions of officers David Carrick for a series of rapes while serving as an officer and Wayne Couzens, who raped and murdered Sarah Everard.
An independent review into culture at the Met was carried out by Baroness Louise Casey in 2021, and in early 2022, the Independent Office for Police Conduct found that officers at Charing Cross police station had routinely shared WhatsApp messages containing violent, misogynist and discriminatory content.
The Met was ordered to overhaul its toxic working culture and raise standards in light of the findings.
Further examples of toxic working culture include the London Fire Brigade, where an independent culture review found the organisation to be “institutionally misogynist and racist”. It detected a number of incidents of bullying targeted at ethnic minorities and women.
In October 2022, the Royal Navy launched an investigation into allegations of bullying, misogyny and sexual harassment against women in the Submarine Service.
In the private sector, one headline-grabbing example of toxic working culture is the pub and brewing business Brewdog.
An open letter from employees was shared on social media, claiming there was a “culture of fear” and that the business was built on “a cult of personality”.
Founder James Watt said the company would increase its investment in HR to better support the welfare of workers and to deal with issues raised in an independent report into its organisational culture.
Charities are not immune from a toxic working culture. In April 2021, Oxfam was temporarily suspended from accessing UK aid funding after allegations of sexual exploitation and bullying by staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What are the risks?
Alongside employees feeling less engaged with work and less productive, tolerating a toxic working culture can lead to increased absence – not to mention long-term sickness – thanks to the impact it can have on employees’ mental health.
The legal risks can be both costly and damaging to reputation, as complaints that are not dealt with satisfactorily could end up the subject of an employment tribunal claim.
As Jonathan Maude points out in his article on tackling toxic working culture, “it can take years to build a reputation, seconds to destroy it – perhaps for good?”
Is it possible to turn around a toxic working culture?
Because organisational culture is so subjective and unique to each employee, it can be difficult to benchmark whether a culture has improved.
According to the MIT Sloan Management Review, there are three drivers companies should focus on in turning around a toxic working culture: leadership, social norms, and how work is designed.
It found that more than 90% of CEOs and chief financial officers in US companies felt that improving corporate culture would also boost financial performance, ranking a healthy working culture as one of the top three factors impacting financial results.
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Taking visible action to turn around a toxic culture can itself be viewed as a positive. This could mean offering an anonymous route to report behaviours that go against company values, for example, or showing that managers have responded to issues raised in employee surveys.
Other routes could include:
- Reviewing company values to see if they still resonate with staff, and clarifying the behaviours expected to align with these values.
- Inviting an external party in to audit your culture, demonstrating a commitment to unbiased and constructive criticism of how things are done at the organisation.
- Run regular surveys that include questions about whether employees feel a sense of belonging or listened to, publicly report on progress and act on the findings.
- Ensure leaders call out toxic behaviours, showing it’s acceptable for all employees to speak up. They should also model the behaviour they expect from employees.
- Encourage managers to discuss social norms with teams, as this can prevent small ‘pockets’ of toxic behaviour spreading to the rest of the organisation.
