Employee engagement in the UK is chronically low, a 2023 survey found a staggering 90% of employees feel disengaged at work, lacking enthusiasm for their role. Toxic workplace cultures play a large role in employee disengagement and poses multiple challenges for organisations. 75% of UK employees have experienced a toxic work culture at some point in their career, with 85% of respondents saying toxic culture has negatively affected their mental health.
Gallup’s State of The Global Workplace report found unfair treatment to be the leading cause of employee disengagement, followed by unmanageable workloads and unclear communication plus a lack of support from managers – in other words, a poor workplace culture.
These alarmingly high statistics indicate that much more needs to be done by businesses to transform toxic workplaces and create healthier environments for people to flourish, because people are what make businesses great.
Toxic work environments have significant negative outcomes for everyone, not only are they unpleasant for the people working in the business, but it stifles productivity, creativity and ultimately profitability, impacting the long-term success of a business.
Developing the employee voice is central to building a thriving workplace culture and essential to employee engagement – toxicity can often go unnoticed, so when employees are silent and choose not to speak up, it should set alarm bells ringing. Employee silence indicates that they are disengaged, feeling disconnected and undervalued, perhaps even scared to voice their opinions or report wrongdoing at work.
Recognising a toxic workplace
Understanding what’s really going on in your workplace, the behaviours that are prevalent and how your employees feel is the first step to recognising what a toxic work environment looks like. From there you can begin to implement practical strategies to transform a toxic workplace culture.
Toxic workplaces manifest in many ways, sometimes the signs are obvious but often it’s hidden beneath the surface. Whatever form it takes, the outcome is the same – disengaged employees and low levels of productivity.
We’ve detailed below some clear indicators that your workplace may be toxic:
- High levels of employee turnover
- High levels of sickness and poor mental health
- Barriers to communication and effective teamwork
- Micromanagement, lack of trust and support
- Unhealthy work-life balance
- Bullying, harassment and other types of unwanted behaviour
- Cliques or open favouritism
- High levels of disengagement
- Poor or unethical leadership
- Increase of employees wanting to work from home to avoid toxic work environment
Why leaders don’t (or can’t) recognise a toxic work environment
We often come across leaders who don’t believe there is a problem with their workplace culture and that there’s no unwanted behaviour happening across their business. The truth is that people in a position of power, can’t always see bullying, harassment or other types of unwanted behaviour because you’re most likely surrounded by a leadership team who respect you and your employees view you in a position of authority and therefore behave in an appropriate manner.
You might not think there’s an issue with your culture because it’s not happening to you, and you don’t view it happening to anyone else either. Employee silence doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no unwanted behaviour happening in your organisation or that your culture is so good that no one ever makes a complaint or voices their opinion, more likely, they are afraid to speak up because they fear the consequences, they don’t know who or how to report unwanted behaviour or worse, they don’t report because nothing will be done even if they did choose to speak up.
Why is employee voice so important to transforming toxic work environments?
Developing employee voice is essential to understanding workplace culture and transforming work environments. When you enable employees to have a voice, they are more productive, feeling valued, recognised, and therefore committed – it’s a key ingredient for achieving highly engaged teams.
When employees have a voice and speak up it demonstrates:
- They are comfortable voicing opinions and concerns, they feel safe being authentic and honest about their thoughts, with high levels of trust and inclusivity across the business
- Healthy relationships between managers and teams, and positive inter-team dynamics
- Employees are taking ownership of their work
Employee voice is at the heart of engagement at work
Employee voice is about ensuring everyone feels listened to, comfortable to express their thoughts, opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation or consequences. Employees want to have a voice to make them feel like an active stakeholder who is valued, appreciated and heard, giving them confidence in themselves and their role. When employees feel comfortable to use their voice, they contribute more, feeling invested in the organisation and the quality of work they are doing.
Employee voice unlocks equality, diversity and inclusion
When all types of employees’ voices are heard in the workplace, not just a minority of employees,, it unlocks diversity and inclusion, generating a sense of belonging. EDI shouldn’t just be a buzzword, it’s an essential part of creating a positive culture, a diverse workforce that is empowered to use their voice benefits everyone, more diverse teams with diverse thoughts make better decisions, driving innovation and creativity, contributing to the success of a business.
How can leaders amplify employee voice to combat toxic work environments?
Improving toxic culture starts with pinpointing the root cause that’s driving a negative culture and to do that you need to fully understand what is happening in your organisation by listening to your employees and encouraging them to speak up.
Encourage transparency, open communication and collaboration
95% of employees who haven’t experienced a toxic workplace culture said they felt safe in giving honest feedback in their workplace. Foster an environment where employees feel safe to raise concerns without fear of the consequences. According to Harvard research, the top two reasons people don’t speak up at work were fear of being viewed negatively and fear of damaging a work relationship. When you remove the fear, you create psychological safety, giving employees the confidence to speak up.
But trust isn’t built overnight – you need to build rapport, involving employees and encouraging collaboration. Managers should invite employees to participate in two-way conversations, even something as simple as making it a regular practice to ask, ‘what do you think?’ at the end of team meetings to give them an opportunity to bring ideas and questions.
When you practice transparency and share information to keep employees in the loop, the more confident and empowered they will be to share their insights.
Creating safe channels to report – both direct and indirect channels
69% of employees believe that the communication channels and technology they use in their organisation play a vital role in contributing to a positive culture. Toxic cultures thrive in silence, so it’s not enough to tell employees to speak up, you need to provide the channels and opportunity for them to do so.
40% of employees have experienced culture damaging behaviour at work but only 5% speak up about their experiences. When it’s often managers and leaders that are the cause of toxicity, employees need a safe and accessible way to feedback beyond the traditional direct to manager or HR route.
Implementing an anonymous reporting platform can be key to unlocking employee voice because it removes the barriers to speaking up. Our own research found that 62% of people would be more likely to report harassment or discrimination at work if they had an anonymous reporting platform to do so. Organisations without anonymous reporting routes are missing out on key information about the reality of their culture.
Listening isn’t enough, act and communicate
Leaders need to remember that implementing new technology and reporting channels to encourage employees to speak up just isn’t enough, you need to act on what you hear and communicate the steps you’re taking to improve and alleviate concerns, tackling issues head-on.
Showing employees that their reports make a difference and action is taken when they do speak up helps to develop a culture of feedback. And most importantly, if you decide not to act it’s crucial to communicate with employees why so that they do not become disengaged.
Early intervention and conflict management skills
Addressing conflict before it escalates and resolving issues early is good for everyone, no one wants to work in an environment where negative hangs in the air with complaints unresolved.
When employees see that you act on conflict or instances of unwanted behaviour, it demonstrates this type of behaviour won’t be tolerated and is unacceptable, building trust between managers and teams, increasing transparency and strengthening relationships to make workplaces a nicer place to be.
Often employees don’t want to speak up about their experiences of toxic workplace culture because they don’t want to be responsible for their colleagues being punished, whether that’s the potential of them facing a disciplinary process, dismissal, a loss of career progression or other negative outcomes that impact other people. It’s important that we educate employees to recognise that ‘punishment’ isn’t always the case and it shouldn’t be a reason for not speaking up when they see or experience unwanted behaviour at work.
We need to empower employees to speak up about all types of incidents in the workplace that make them feel uncomfortable, safe in the knowledge that disciplinary processes and ‘punishment’ are not the only potential resolutions for speaking up. Employees should be made aware that by reporting all types of behaviour can bring about positive outcomes and changes in the workplace, if only employers knew about the challenges faced in the first place.
For example, here are some alternative options that can be enacted by an employer in response to a report:
- Education and training
- Informal line manager conversations
- Mediation
- Policy or process change
When we encourage a speak up culture, we can tackle signs of toxic workplace culture in their earliest forms, preventing escalation to more severe incidents.
Using data to drive change
Data from employee feedback can be used to drive meaningful change across your business. The benefit of having an anonymous reporting platform like Culture Shift, you’re collecting data that can be used to view and address trends in detail. We discussed above how culture isn’t always experienced by everyone within your organisation in the same way so with access to data from employees you can really see how culture damaging behaviours might be impacting sections of your organisation, whether it’s in a specific department, across a certain level of seniority level and much more.
With deeper insight you can take a more targeted approach to your intervention and culture building activity and monitor trends over time so you can start to see the ROI and hopefully improvements to your culture. Our platform is the best way to understand your organisation’s culture through data.
How Culture Shift can support leaders to transform toxic workplace culture and develop employee voice
It’s time for businesses to start listening, employee voice is not just a nice to have it’s essential to unlocking employee engagement and productivity to drive long term business success.
Culture Shift’s full suite reporting software and resolution system allows organisations to hear their people when it matters most, empowering organisations to truly tackle culture damaging behaviours and transform toxic work environments.
Book a free demo today
Sources
https://www.oak.com/media/v1wp24tf/toxic-workplace-report-final-cleaned.pdf
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx%23ite-506924
