Companies with toxic cultures are all over the news. This isn’t a problem you can ignore or pretend is not affecting your business. You’re going to see real business costs through employee disengagement and employee turnover, and possibly active sabotage and discriminatory lawsuits. These problems add up to real dollars too - toxic or fear based cultures have cost US companies over $200 billion over the past 5 years.
Toxic cultures flourish under leaders who use fear and intimidation to drive results from their subordinates. This may occur locally within one team under a manager who uses unethical or mean-spirited means to manipulate their team, or it could permeate the entire company organization when an executive uses a “command and control” management style to micromanage for results.
A downward spiral to toxicity is created when micromanaged employees become overly fearful of doing the wrong thing and become less willing to take initiative. This lack of initiative is simply labeled as “employee underperformance” if sufficient investigation is not performed. The manager then feels disappointed in his or her team, and scared of missing key deliverables. This leads to more micromanaging and constrictive policies to fix the “low performing and unmotivated” employees, and a cycle is born that only ends when employees quit or the toxic leader is removed.
This all sounds really bad, and frankly, it is. Nobody wants to work in a place where you live in constant fear. Eventually you won’t be able to recruit good people as word gets around, existing employees get burnt out and quit, and your intellectual capital walks out the door. Meanwhile, your competition with the healthy, resilient culture will be delivering great products to the market, possibly poaching your best people, and stealing your market share.
It’s not all bad news though. I find that when this situation is discovered by leadership, they want to take steps to fix it immediately. After all, with 85% of global employees classified as “disengaged”, imagine how much more productive your company would be if your existing employees were even 20% more productive. That’s like adding another day to the work week for free.
What are some signs that you might have a toxic workplace situation?
Increasing employee turnover and absenteeism.
A stampede to the door at 5pm.
Drop in product quality.
Missed deadlines.
Resistance to policies and procedures.
If you see any of these signs, please contact me. There is no one size fits all solution to a toxic culture or even a culture that is heading in that direction. Any lasting improvement will need to take into account many variables such as the expectations, industry, leadership strengths, company size, willingness to change, and magnitude of the problem.
I offer a free one hour consultation, and I’d like to talk with you. I look forward to understanding your specific situation and creating a plan to improve your company culture.