There are plenty of signs that a workplace is toxic on the inside as well as on the outside, but there’s also the risk of assuming all workplaces where work is done are toxic. There are some places which win awards for their care of staff, for their endless flexibility around working hours and deadlines, but I challenge you to show me one where they also win awards for being productive. In other words, we’re there to work in a workplace and sometimes work means pressure, stress, mistakes, failure and being called out for it by the boss or your colleagues. This does not make your workplace toxic.
What’s more, standards of pressure vary between industries, and coming from one industry to another is often a culture shock; going from the Public Service to an ASX 100, where the share-price may flash on the wall of every floor in Head Office, is a case in point.
But be in no doubt, toxic means toxic. It is never about a one -off incident of sexual harassment or joking about a staff member’s disability or insulting their racial background. It’s never even a series of incidents. Toxic workplaces kills organisations.
Recent Australian research conducted in the Department of Defence, using advanced statistical techniques, demonstrated that sexual misconduct, for example, was unlikely to be the only cause of an employee’s discontent. In fact, it might often be of secondary concern compared with, say, bullying, or unwelcome drinking sessions in the office. My sense is, having done several cultural reviews and read many more, that persistent behaviour which undermines trust and respect between staff members is rarely limited to one type of behaviour. Thus, the boss who sexually harasses his staff often underpays them, or fails to make them permanent, or promotes an employee temporarily but never appoints them to a position. Similarly, the supervisor who tolerates racist jokes about a team member may also openly favour some staff over others, allow office drinks before the work is finished, fail to meet professional output standards or mismanage staff pays, rosters and leave arrangements. Other bosses may not actively participate in the offending behaviour but turn a blind eye to it- and every other kind of misconduct.
I recall during one review, listening to a professional woman describing what it was like to be the only female senior team member. She was the only one with a professional background; her male colleagues had been the boss’s friend from their days in other offices together or were mates with the boss’s deputy. It wasn’t just the sexual harassment she objected to, it was the open bar fridge in mid-afternoon, the poor standard of work tolerated and the gossipy, loud mouthed discussion that went on constantly around her without ever involving her. Objections were dealt with through offensive jokes until the objector fell silent. Female staff turnover was high and all other women in the office were in junior or administrative roles. Oh yes, and turning up on time was optional. Her problem was greater than one incident, or even a series of similar incidents; her problem was the office culture. She called it toxic; meaning pervasively harmful. I think she was right.
Ultimately a toxic culture is a failure of leadership. Leaders who tolerate or enable one form of misconduct and never speak up against it, generally also provide poor leadership in other areas of the organisation’s work life. Sure, there will always be truly sexist or discriminatory managers who genuinely revel in the unfairness they inflict and may even consider they are showing strong leadership by being tough. But more often, it is simply a failure of leadership. Which is why, so often, the victim gets the sack, or made to move on, not the perpetrator. The failed leader is unable to resolve the conflict any other way. I would go broke if I had to give a dollar for every time a hapless boss has explained to the Board that the perpetrator was more valuable to the company and moving on the victim was the only way out. Perpetrators who force their organisations into court, or onto the lead of your X feed, turn out to be very expensive but in any case, the problem will always be bigger than that conduct.
When you look at disrespectful or offensive behaviour as part of a cauldron of factors swirling around in a workplace, it’s hard to describe it as anything other than toxic.
Understanding the impact of toxicity on unacceptable conduct of any kind has an enormous impact on the conduct of a cultural review. It is not just about those claims of misconduct, how many there are and how the organisation dealt with them, important as these factors are. Checking out other aspects of the organisation’s internal functioning often takes the reviewer to better solutions, faster. It is more laborious and not nearly as exciting as shocking revelations and the standard potpourri of solutions (diversify the workplace, put in place independent complaints mechanisms, promote more women/disabled/religious or racial minority are widely accepted first steps). By digging deeper and wider, the review can deliver an unvarnished big picture of the organisation which in turn leads to solutions which are more widely accepted by staff and attack the root causes, not merely the symptoms, of workplace toxicity.