Toxic culture: How to flag when the culture goes wrong
We often emphasize the importance of building culture as your organization begins to grow and even before it does. Your team’s culture is multi-faceted and goes beyond simply the behavior of one person towards another. It’s the infrastructure of beliefs and values guiding the company and pervades all levels of the team.
One thing that needs to be on every founder’s radar as much as building culture, is maintaining it. In particular, what happens if your culture turns toxic?
A negative work environment has huge ramifications for your company and needs to be addressed as soon as signs of a toxic culture emerge. If not, productivity may begin to lag and employee turnover will rise as people feel the effects of a negative working environment.
Look no further than European FinTech giant N26 , which is facing a rebellion from its own employees over poor workplace culture. If the CEO had acted sooner and more explicitly to listen to the team over work-life balance and toxic workplace demands, this situation could have been avoided. Now the company faces a huge barrier to its reputation both internally and externally.
So how do you identify a toxic workplace culture? Here are some simple red flags to look out for:
- Lack of transparent communication — Gossiping and/or social cliques begin to form within the company, unclear expectations set by management
- Bullying behavior — proactive exclusion of team members and unsavoury communication
- Dictatorial management techniques — Little or no embrace of employee feedback, strained interaction between employees and their bosses
- Limited employee engagement — Rising absenteeism, illness, or fatigue with limited explanation
- Imbalanced working conditions — Favoritism and discriminatory HR policies (wage gaps, holiday preferences)
- No work/life balance — Pervasive workaholic behavior, unrealistic workloads, or deadlines
Fear not, a toxic culture can be saved with some determination at every level of the organization to bring about positive change. After all, as Gary Chapman points out in his Rising Above A Toxic Workplace book , “When a workplace becomes toxic, its poison spreads beyond its walls and into the lives of its workers and their families.”
With this in mind, here are some steps you can take in your organization to unroot an emerging toxic culture.
- Give ample recognition
Are some employees taking credit for their colleagues’ work? Do they belittle each other’s efforts to make themselves look good? It’s a competitive working world now more than ever, but it doesn’t have to be that way within your company.
Ensure that everyone who contributes to a project is getting the credit that they deserve by working closely with your team whenever possible and asking them to be open about updates on their progress.
2. Create a team sharing culture
In much high-pressure environment, there is often a top-performing employee, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is incompetent. It’s normal to incite some friendly competition among your employees, but how you deal with the results of the competition matters. Do you subject the “losers” to humiliation? This could lead to irreparable resentment and the loss of morale. You want your employees to be hungry to be the top performer next time, not discouraged.
Consider arranging for top performers to mentor the ones who are having trouble hitting their targets. This will naturally foster a positive working environment, and results in a more cohesive team.
3. Don’t pick favorites
A team leader that plays favorites and scapegoats is a huge contributing factor to toxic workplace culture. Not only does this behavior alienate a large part of your team, but it can also lead to the formation of cliques and the eventual breakdown of the team.
Make an explicit attempt to treat everyone on your team equally, checking in with them individually at regular intervals.
4. Lead by example
A good leader admits to mistakes and lives by their own code of conduct, whereas a bad leader merely enforces it on others. Make sure to set rules that you follow, or create a feedback standard that you also adhere to. Seeing is believing!
Leaders can’t begin to resolve the problem of a toxic culture without acknowledging how their own conduct may have influenced the situation. It’s important to remember that your actions don’t have to be deliberate or conscious — stress, workplace politics and the desire to avoid disagreement can all cause leaders to unwittingly turn a blind eye and unintentionally allow bad behavior to exist.
Take the steps to build empathy into your everyday leadership. Shrug off any instinctive defensiveness you may feel. Recognize personal errors, own them, and then correct them sends a powerful message to other team members.
5. Provide outlets for mutual feedback
It’s important to give your employees an avenue to communicate their concerns, desires or ideas. Give them the confidence to even share negative feedback with the understanding it will be considered and addressed. You can even offer incentives for sharing ideas that can improve the workplace.
People like to know that they are doing well in their roles, especially if they are exceptional at it and love what they do. When team members are included they feel valued and respected, and this boosts morale, restores unity, and ultimately helps improve both climate and confidence
6. Encourage transparency
If your employees are hesitant to approach you for help, there’s a good chance that it is fear holding them back, not awe. While boundaries are important in maintaining your role as a leader, it also pays to encourage your employees to approach you with their concerns or if they need assistance.
Keep lines of communication open and foster a collaborative work culture. You can do this by proactively opening chats with each team member, letting them know what they can expect from positive leadership. Using employee engagement software can also be an anonymous way to encourage feedback loops.
7. Actually take action
Kind words alone aren’t enough — you need to actually take action!
Hold people across your team accountable for their actions. Improving culture is driven by the founder, but brought to life by every single person in the company. Watch out for underperformers or toxic culture promoters, and ensure decisive action is taken to remedy the root causes of the problem.
Build a robust policy for dealing with different types of behavior and build a structure that promotes sustainable positive culture. Don’t let your culture relapse by not investing time into the root causes of what went wrong.
With these changes and this mindset over time, your toxic culture will transform into a dynamic, positive work environment. As a result, your business can continue to grow without compromising the needs of the people helping to build it.
