How to Identify a Toxic Culture and 13 Ways to Fix It

A toxic culture isn’t as obvious to those working in it as it is to everyone watching it on the big screen.

Case in point: This year’s The Devil Wears Prada 2 – and the original movie from 20 years ago. 

What’s obvious is that Meryl Streep’s boss character, Miranda Priestly, has always been vicious, condescending and glamorous.

What’s less obvious, but good news for curing toxic culture is this time around, those qualities make her seem out of touch and style.

Toxicity Still Exists

That change on the big screen reflects real-world workplaces. But don’t be mistaken: Toxicity still exists.

When the first Prada was released, there were many organizations that had “a Transactional culture – often referred to as a toxic culture – which is characterized by high accountability, but low care,” says Bill Banham, Partner and Keynote Speaker at IHHP. “It’s the kind of culture where short-term results matter over relationships. Bad behavior of employees is tolerated because those individuals get results.

“We have seen a shift in organizations recognizing that kind of culture is not sustainable. People get burnt out and disengaged and ultimately leave, costing companies tens of millions of dollars,” says Banham. “

In fact, employees see or experience 208 million acts of incivility at American workplaces every day, according to data from SHRM.

That’s why fixing a toxic culture can be a daunting task. Where would you start? What should you focus on fixing? What steps do you even take? And how do you know it’ll actually work?

We can help here with guidance on understanding what creates, drives and fixes a toxic culture.

What Creates a Toxic Workplace Culture

Every toxic workplace has a unique environment. Some are full of backstabbing and cutthroat behavior. Others are hotbeds for gossip and exclusivity. 

None of that’s good.

But researchers at iHire asked employees what the most common behaviors they see that create a toxic culture are. The biggest:

• Poor leadership practices, seen as being unethical, unaccountable and unsupportive (79%)
• Poor communication, seen as a lack of transparency or conflicting messages (70%)
• Unfair treatment of employees, seen as favoritism, discrimination and inequities (68%)
• High stress levels and stress created through unrealistic deadlines, unmanageable workloads and poor work/life balance (65%)
• Negativity, seen as culture compromised due to gossip, fear or blame (60%)
• Conflict and hostility, witnessed or experienced through bullying, harassment and poor resolution mechanisms (59%)

All of this affects employees’ mental and physical well-being and takes a toll on company performance.

Know the Main Drivers of Toxic Cultures

Unfortunately, toxicity is more widespread than we’d like to think. About 10% of employees work in a toxic culture, according to research in the MIT Sloan Management Review. And even good places to work have pockets of toxicity, the researchers found.

Through an analysis of hundreds of studies, the MIT researchers found evidence of three key drivers of toxic culture:

• Leadership: Leaders — from the CEO to front-line managers — set the tone. If they’re toxic, it will trickle down. Consider Miranda Priestly: Most of the young wannabes were prickly like her, at least at first. 
• Social norms: They’re defined by what behavior is expected and acceptable in day-to-day social interactions. However, written guidelines for respect, for example, don’t always reflect what really happens in the workplace. At the Vogue-like fashion magazine, fashion norms changed from Prada 1 to Prada 2, but the new regime – B.J. Novak’s Jay Ravitz – is still condescending in his own right.
• Work design: There are a handful of elements to work design, such as workload and job demands, organizational protocols and team dynamics. All assistants – including Ann Hathaway’s Andy Sachs in the original movie – were expected to be “on” 24/7, interfering with life and relationships.

We have strategies to address each of these drivers of culture.

Leadership: Time to Take the Lead

“Start at the top, with the CEO and the senior team, or whoever the senior leaders are,” says Banham. “What they model, reward, ignore and reprimand sends a signal to the rest of the organization about what behaviors are accepted and ‘how things are done around here.’ It’s very difficult to get behavior to change lower down in an organization when those people see the leaders at the top of the organization not modeling it.”

• Quantify culture. If leaders are serious about a cultural detox, they’ll want to put their money where their mouths are. First, they’ll need to admit there’s a toxic culture. Then, MIT researchers suggest they link cultural improvements to bottom-line benefits such as lower attrition and healthcare costs.
• Report progress. Transparency — first in admitting there’s an issue, then in publicly pursuing solutions — is key to success. From there, leaders will want to monitor and report progress on their cultural aspirations. While it can be hard to quantify, consider turnover rates, diversity initiative successes and brand image.
• Model behavior. Researchers say, “When leaders act consistently with core values … it is one of the most powerful predictors of how positively employees rate their corporate culture.” Most companies have integrity, respect and diversity as core values. Employees need to see their leaders follow those.
• Coach front-line leaders. They have the biggest impact on employee engagement and behavior. But many don’t understand how to identify toxic behavior — especially if they’re the culprit — and its impact on their teams. Coaching can help improve their attitudes, goal achievement and resilience. Bottom line, most front-line managers need soft-skill training.
• Raise the expectations. When people are promoted into leadership positions, and during all training and coaching, you’ll want to be clear about the behavior that is expected of them. Lean into core values such as integrity, respect and diversity, and explain the consequences — up to and including termination — for failing to uphold them.
• Know when to part ways. Sometimes you get what Banham calls fixer-uppers. “These are smart and high-performing individuals who are demonstrating toxic behaviors. They get results, but leave bodies in their wake. The organization doesn’t want to lose them, but the bad behaviors cannot continue.”
  • First, give them feedback on their toxic behaviors.
  • Ask if they want to work toward changing. 
  • “If the answer is no, then we don’t suggest spending time or resources trying to change them, and it’s time to move on,” says Banham. “If the answer is yes, the good news is that anyone can learn to change if they want to.” 

Social Norms: Establish Healthy Norms

You’ve heard the adage, “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” That can’t be more true than in a toxic work environment. Researchers found that toxic social norms increase the odds that even good people will behave badly. To right the ship:

• Let work groups define their social norms. Turns out, they know what’s best for them. Rather than implement a one-size-fits-all methodology for respect, have each group brainstorm, practice and review behaviors that create a positive culture.
• Train front-line managers to lead discussions on social norms. To facilitate those work group norms, ask leaders to explicitly discuss social norms and ways to reduce toxic behaviors.
• Root out toxic leadership. You’ll need to look at existing data on turnover, engagement and voice of the employee to identify abusive leaders. It’s not always pretty, and employees may not be able to find exact words to explain what’s going on. But when you listen to employee feedback — formal and informal — and mine your data for productivity, morale and engagement issues, you can find the root of toxicity.
• Stay balanced. Banham’s research at IHHP found that toxic cultures are decreasing because “organizations have focused on becoming a more caring place to work.” But, “in the past 10 years, we have encountered many organizations who over-indexed on care, and became a high-care but low-accountability culture – what we call a Family culture. There is connection, trust and psychological safety, but the hard conversations and hard decisions are not happening, leading to performance issues.” So you have to ensure that in fixing a toxic culture, you don’t lose sight of performance and quality expectations.

Work Design: Redesign to Cut Stress

This is a chicken-or-egg question: Does a toxic workplace cause stress, or does stress cause the toxic workplace?

High-stress workplaces contribute to negative outcomes such as employee attrition, mental health issues and burnout. Lesser known, according to the MIT researchers, is that stressful jobs are a breeding ground for toxic behavior.

So you want to curb stress and the factors that contribute to it.

• Reduce nuisance work. You don’t need to just reduce employees’ workloads. In fact, positive work challenges might cause temporary stress, but they increase engagement and job ownership. What you want to reduce is red tape, unclear responsibilities, insufficient resources and meaningless tasks.
• Clarify responsibilities. Similarly, employees perform best when they understand their duties, how to balance those with the people they work with most and the expected outcomes. Have managers meet regularly with employees to make sure goals and expectations are aligned.
• Increase autonomy. Two key points here: 1) MIT researchers found that giving employees more autonomy over their work was almost as powerful at reducing toxic behaviors as reducing their workload. 2) When you give employees more control over their work, you can mitigate the impact of unclear responsibilities.