How to Identify a Toxic Culture and 11 Ways to Fix It

A toxic culture isn’t always obvious. In fact, it’s usually the dark side of the workplace that leaders don’t see, or worse, turn a blind eye to.

But employees notice and feel it. According to data from SHRM, employees see or experience 208 million acts of incivility at American workplaces every day.

Still, for leaders, fixing a toxic culture probably feels like a daunting task. After all, 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?

What Creates Workplace Culture

Researchers at MIT Sloan School of Management identified five attributes that almost always create and define a toxic culture:

• Disrespect
• Non-inclusiveness
• Unethical actions
• Cutthroat behavior, and
• Abusive interactions.

What’s more, according to the father-son research team of Donald and Charles Sull, “workers who experience the elements of a toxic culture are more likely to suffer from greater stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout.

“When toxic subcultures are allowed to fester within an organization, affected employees are more likely to disengage from their work, badmouth their employer on employee review sites like Glassdoor or Indeed, or look for another job,” the researchers say.

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

Unfortunately, it’s more widespread than we’d like to think. About 10% of employees experience a toxic workplace culture. And even good places to work have pockets of toxicity, the researchers found.

That’s where the “cultural detox” comes in. The MIT researchers say leaders can improve the employee experience and engagement, plus avoid culture-related turnover and negative word of mouth, if they find and address toxic subcultures.

Here’s how:

Know the Main Drivers of Toxic Cultures

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.
• 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.
• Work design: There are a handful of elements to work design, such as workload and job demands, organizational protocols and team dynamics.

Here are strategies to address each driver of culture.

Leaders Must Take the Lead

“Leaders cannot improve corporate culture unless they are willing to hold themselves and their colleagues accountable for toxic behavior,” the MIT researchers say.

• 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, 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.

Establish Healthy Social 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.

Redesign Work 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) Researchers found that giving employees more autonomy over their work was almost as powerful at reducing toxic behaviors as was reducing their workload. 2) When you give employees more control over their work you can mitigate the impact of unclear responsibilities