Danger Of Toxic Workplace Behavior & it’s Impact On Burnout and Attrition
The Workplace, over the years, has been an area where new ideas, world-changing innovations, and creativity thrive. It is, however, necessary that the work environment is geared to encourage these ideas and creativity. This is as important as the ideas themselves. Unfortunately, even though proper work behavior and environment can aid in ideation and allow creativity to thrive, toxic workplace behavior can kill these ideas and not allow for much creativity.
The dangers of a toxic workplace cannot be underplayed as it takes a toll on employees’ health. The employees face stress, anxiety, and even dread. This affects their performances and ultimately affects the employers.
How To Identify a Toxic Workplace?:
A toxic workplace is where employees find it challenging to work or progress in their careers due to the hostile atmosphere created by co-workers, supervisors, or the company culture. This sort of environment makes one feel unsafe mentally/psychologically unsafe. Many signs characterize a toxic workplace, some of which will be outlined.
Toxic workplace
Healthy workplace
Goals
Undefined and unclear
Obvious
Beliefs
Considered Irrelevant
Put into consideration and incorporated.
Communication
Passive-aggressive, Aggressive. One-way communication, only commands.
Expressive communication. Understanding and assertive.
Human Resources
Staff is treated as tools used to aid business
Staff feelings are valued and understood
Conflicts
avoided
resolved
Job description
All-encompassing/ enslaving
Clearly defined
These signs may differ based on the work environment or the people involved.
These are a few ways to identify a toxic workplace:
Causes Of Toxicity in The Workplace
1)Bad Leadership: If a leader constantly emits negative energy, this can affect the workplace atmosphere and the team’s performance. When the leader has no idea how to lead correctly, it can primarily affect the employees, creating a toxic workplace. Usually, leadership is poor when the leaders are self-centered and build the business’s operation solely on themselves. These poor leaders do not often take responsibility for their mistakes, are tyrannical, and micromanage.
2)Corrupt work culture: Top organizations have solid cultural values. In a toxic work environment, these values are weaponized and used selfishly instead of their original intent.
This corrupt work culture is also characterized by certain people always having the reins in an organization. Non-inclusion of people of a specific department of the organization also comes under corrupt work culture.
3)Harmful employees: Employees can also emit negative energy, causing a toxic workplace for their colleagues. This includes bullying, emotional blackmail, and intimidation, affecting their colleagues and smothering creativity.
The Effect of Toxic Workplace Behavior :
Toxicity in the Workplace has many negative impacts, affecting the employees and the organization in the long run. Some of these include burnout and attrition. Employee burnout and attrition are common in toxic workplaces. The employees are tired of the constant poisonous environment, and either have a very laid-back attitude to work or eventually leave. This dramatically affects the business as the organization’s success depends on the employees’ attitude to work. These effects include increased employee turnover, lack of growth and development, and decreased productivity.
Conclusion
A toxic workplace significantly impacts job productivity and increases the job burnout level of employees. When employees feel pessimistic about organizations, their productivity level is compromised. This can affect the organization’s performance significantly. Toxic workplace behavior harms employees and the organization in the long run. To a large extent, the performance of an organization is proportional to the thriving work environment in which its employees are placed.
