For a sizeable portion of Americans, work is demoralizing, frightening, and even traumatic.
In APA’s 2023 Work in America workforce survey, 19% of respondents labeled their workplace as toxic. More than one in five respondents (22%) said their work environment has harmed their mental health.
“Toxic workplace” is an abstract term to describe infighting, intimidation, and other affronts that harm productivity. Mindy Shoss, PhD, a professor and industrial-organizational psychologist at the University of Central Florida, sums up a toxic workplace with a single word.
“If I had to distill it down to a core theme, that theme would be fear,” Shoss said. “Toxic workplaces drain all the energy and excitement out of employees and replace it with fear.”
The U.S. Surgeon General’s office underscored the impact of toxic work cultures in 2022 with its Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being. Chronic stress from workplace abuse can lead to depression, heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, MD, wrote.
High cost of dysfunction
Toxic workplaces can involve ethical and legal offenses, such as sexual harassment, discrimination, and whistleblower retaliation, said David Yamada, director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School. In other cases, the toxicity involves bullying or unreasonable workloads. The result—in any context—is high absenteeism, low productivity, and soaring turnover.
A 2022 study in the MIT Sloan Management Review cited toxic work cultures as the top driver of employee attrition—well above job insecurity or lack of recognition for performance. The report said leading contributors to toxic work cultures included:
- Failure to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)
- Workers feeling disrespected
- Unethical behavior
How to improve the workplace
People who believe they’re being mistreated at work can look for corrective options in their employee handbook, from their union, or from an attorney, psychologists say. They should also consider whether their organization’s human resources department takes employee complaints seriously, Yamada said. In many cases, seeking a new job may be the best recourse, he added. Employers should investigate complaints and concerns about toxic work conditions as soon as they emerge, Yamada said. They should look for and eliminate discrimination or sexual harassment to avoid legal exposure, and establish policies and procedures to address bullying, he said.
Shoss encourages workplace wellness audits to assess whether workers feel supported, encouraged, and treated fairly. Organizations should build a culture of respect and safety and should evaluate leaders on their conformity with those values, she said.
Leslie Hammer, PhD, a professor at Oregon Health and Science University, supports training leaders to build healthy workplaces. Hammer has developed and evaluated several 1-hour computer-based interactive trainings that teach supervisors how to identify, assist, and support employees who are at risk for decreased health, safety, and well-being. The trainings have boosted employee job satisfaction, reduced the number of people planning to quit, and lifted personal well-being, according to a 2021 article in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.
The Surgeon General’s framework provides a solid guide for employers who want to foster a healthy work environment, Shoss said. The framework recommends that organizations:
- Minimize physical hazards, discrimination, bullying, and harassment
- Reduce long working hours, excessive workloads, and resource deficiencies that hamper employees’ ability to meet job demands
- Normalize mental health care as a resource for employees
- Operationalize EDI policies to address structural racism, ableism, and implicit bias
- Engage employees in organizational goals and mission statements to foster enthusiasm and commitment
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