6 Signs of a Toxic Work Environment (& 5 Ways to Fix It)
A study conducted by MIT Sloan during the Great Resignation in 2022 found that workers were 10.4 times more likely to quit because of a toxic work environment than because of low pay. This showed that employees, by and large put healthy workplace conditions above salary increases.
The impact of workplace toxicity goes far beyond just individual discomfort. When full-time employees spend 40+ hours a week in hostile work environments, the result is employee burnout, disengagement and serious mental health issues. The consequence of having toxic bosses or bad blood among colleagues can be devastating to the company’s bottom line.
Knowing how to spot and eliminate toxic workplace signs isn’t just about good human resources management and providing a safe space that promotes employee happiness. It also plays a pivotal role in ensuring business survival and even avoiding debilitating legal actions.
What Creates a Toxic Work Environment?
A toxic work environment happens when negative attitudes like manipulation, bullying, intimidation, and discrimination become part of a company’s culture. These toxic behaviors create systems where low morale, stunted productivity, no trust, chronic stress, internal conflicts, and unfair treatment become business as usual.
Toxic workplace culture isn’t just about individual bad actors, it’s systemic dysfunction. Companies are systems of relationships, and toxic companies hurt the people and teams inside them. The American Psychological Association has also revealed that such working conditions create cycles of declining physical health and mental health for American workers.
Team members in these toxic environments feel they’ll be punished, humiliated or rejected if they speak up. Whether it is sharing a good idea, raising a concern or just being themselves at work, employees face psychological safety issues, along with other barriers to employee engagement.
The 6 Warning Signs of a Toxic Workplace
Recognizing red flags early ensures minor issues don’t become major cultural problems. These toxic workplace signs creep up slowly, such that you overlook them until it’s too late.
1) Communication Breakdown
Poor communication is the foundation of most toxic workplaces. Information gets hoarded in silos, colleagues withhold project details from each other, and important messages get lost in the noise.
Poor leadership makes these communication issues even worse. When managers ignore employee feedback or provide unclear, inconsistent direction, team members get different information, or in the worst cases, no information at all about key projects.
This lack of communication creates mistrust and makes it impossible for people to get anything done. New employees waste time seeking clarity while projects stall and deadlines are missed.
2) Blame Culture
When things go wrong, the finger-pointing starts. Toxic culture in the workplace is more about seeking punishment and less about learning from mistakes. As such, people look for scapegoats, not solutions.
This creates paranoia and no collaboration at all. In toxic organizations, people won’t take calculated risks or share creative ideas because they fear being blamed if anything goes wrong.
3) No Recognition
In unhealthy work environments, employees feel underappreciated all the time. Their hard work goes unrecognized, leadership downplays their contributions, and they feel their work doesn’t matter to the organization’s success.
The lack of recognition in toxic workplace culture is deeply demotivating. It makes it impossible for employees to feel invested in their work or commit to achieving a common goal.
4) Hostile and Unprofessional Behavior
Toxic work culture thrives on nasty interactions including rudeness, office gossip, intimidation and outright workplace bullying. Colleagues love to put others down or create unnecessary stress for each other – sometimes just to survive themselves.
Professional boundaries also disappear. Meetings end in shouting competition, personal life and work life boundaries get violated all the time, and basic respect is rare in such environments.
5) Favoritism and Cliques
In a toxic workplace, management promotes and gives opportunities through personal relationships, not performance. There’s an inner circle that gets special treatment and everyone else is left feeling excluded and undervalued by poor leadership.
Playing favorites severely limits career growth for capable long-term employees who deserve recognition. Workplace cliques damage professional relationships and create hostile work environments that destroy trust throughout the organization.
6) High Turnover Rate
You can’t maintain productivity in a toxic work environment, and eventually talented people reach their breaking point and stop putting in effort. You can expect your staff to start leaving at alarming rates when they feel like they have no trusted friend at work they can count on or don’t feel valued.
Long term staff who remain often look drained and pessimistic with zero enthusiasm for great work.
In toxic workplace environments, high staff turnover disrupts team workflows and puts extra workplace stress on remaining staff members.
Root Causes of Toxic Work Environments
Workplace issues never happen in isolation. Multiple factors create and sustain toxic work culture:
- Unclear Company Values – Companies without clear core values create internal problems and foster lack of trust between team members. Many companies publish mission statements and values on their websites but don’t actually practice them in their day-to-day operations. Anything goes in environments that lack set boundaries.
- Absence of Company Culture – If there is no deliberate company’s culture, work becomes transactional. People come to work each day, do their job and leave without developing any meaningful professional relationships. Many employees don’t even know the name of their colleagues nor do they engage in any casual interaction during lunch breaks. This cultural vacuum results in isolation which hurts employee morale and hinders effective collaboration on important projects.
- Communication Breakdowns on All Levels – Effective communication goes in both ways. Employees must be given clear direction by their supervisors. Leaders, on the other hand, should listen actively to concerns within their team and promote free expression of ideas and challenges.
- Lack of Sufficient Feedback Systems – Companies that do not offer regular constructive feedback or conduct meaningful performance reviews run the risk of having talented people working without direction. This is a source of frustration and lost opportunities for professional development.
- Inconsistent and Unrealistic Expectations – When expectations are changing too often or seem unrealistic without proper support, employees lose engagement, become confused and frustration grows. Having consistent standards while supporting team members helps lower the anxiety levels, promotes unity, and creates family member vibes among teammates.
- Excessive Focus on Output – Organizations that value results over employee well-being force excessively long work hours on their staff. This causes high stress levels, tension, fear of failure at work, and constantly feeling tired, such that their work-life balance is destroyed in the process.
The Negative Impact of a Toxic Workplace Culture
The effects of a toxic work environment go much deeper than most leaders realize. While obvious consequences like high employee turnover and less productive work environment are apparent, certain hidden impacts are more damaging to your organization’s success.
Mental and Physical Health Consequences
Employee well-being have significant impacts on work performance and organizational productivity. Staff dealing with high workplace stress levels often experience:
- Sleep disruptions that impair cognitive function and decision making
- Increased anxiety that prevents them from taking on new challenges or responsibilities
- Depression symptoms that reduce creative thinking and problem solving
- Physical symptoms like headaches and digestive issues that increase sick days
When your best employees are calling in sick or disengaged during important meetings, bad work culture might be the underlying cause.
Long-Term Talent Retention Challenges
High performing employees always have options. They won’t stay in toxic workplaces when better options exist elsewhere. The cost of replacing skilled workers is time, money and institutional knowledge that can’t be recovered quickly.
Think about this: your top performer who just submitted their resignation may not be leaving for more money. They might be trying to escape a negative work environment that’s harming their mental health and personal life.
Reputational Damage
In today’s connected business world, toxic workplace signs become public knowledge fast. Former employees share their experiences through professional networks, review sites and personal connections. This reputation damage makes it harder to attract top talent and can have negative impacts on client relationships.
5 Proven Ways to Fix a Toxic Work Environment
Making positive changes to the toxic culture in your workplace requires systematic approaches that get to the roots of the problem and build sustainable, healthy work habits.
- Put Employee Well-Being First
This is the bare minimum of transforming a negative work environment into a good one. Learn about individual employee needs and create open communication channels. Identify what’s getting in the way of performance and involve staff in solving the problem.
You can also focus on employee well-being by creating feedback mechanisms that identify toxic employees at all levels of the organization, including leadership. - Model the Behavior You Expect
Leaders must model the behavior they expect in all situations. Provide leadership training on toxic workplace culture recognition, identification and prevention. You can also share toxic workplace checklists during trainings and how to nip them in the bud.
When leaders model the positive behaviors they seek, it sets the cultural standards for the whole organization to work towards healthier work habits. - Recognition and Reward
A simple “thank you” can make a whole lot of difference. By recognizing all wins, big or small, management can help team members feel valued.
You can also create peer-to-peer recognition programs where employees can thank colleagues for great work. Positive reinforcement builds employee morale and encourages high performance. - Strategic Hiring
While new employees can acquire new job skills, like technical skills, eradicating toxic behavior after hiring is extremely hard. Therefore, focus the hiring process on choosing candidates with positive attitudes and high emotional intelligence, as well as creating positive work environments. - Transparent Communication
Communication is the foundation of healthy organizations. Hold regular team meetings, involve employees in big decisions and ask for feedback on policies and procedures.
Create multiple communication channels through email, messaging platforms and regular meetings to share company information consistently and transparently.
Start Creating a Healthy Work Environment Today.
Transforming a toxic work environment takes effort but the results are worth it for everyone involved. The positive impact on employee happiness, productivity and company reputation goes way beyond team improvements.
Our experienced facilitators not only know how to create fun activities that transform your work environment from bad to great, but we also teach specific classes on how to be a better overall leader! Reach out today to get started!