Toxic Workplace

What a toxic workplace is

A toxic workplace (بيئة العمل السامة) is a management description of an environment in which practices and patterns of behaviour recur that weaken the ability of workers to do their jobs and to stay in them with psychological safety, and which are tolerated in the organisation’s daily life until they become part of the way work is done. “Toxic” is a metaphor for the effect of the environment on those who live in it, and it is not a category with set boundaries. The description applies to an environment and not to a person: an employee is not called “toxic”. The organisation instead asks what in the arrangement of its work and in its accepted behaviour makes its environment so.

This definition belongs to management and concerns the culture of an organisation. It states no legal description of any behaviour and no judgement about anyone, and it is not legal advice. Reading a culture through its visible artifacts, its espoused values and its implicit basic assumptions is the approach of the Schein Model of Organizational Culture.

How a toxic workplace differs from organisational culture

Organizational culture is the set of values, assumptions and patterns of behaviour that govern how work is actually done in an organisation, and every organisation has one. A toxic workplace is a harmful pattern inside that culture, recognised by behaviours and signals that can be observed and not by a passing feeling. A strict culture is not necessarily toxic, and a friendly culture is not necessarily sound. What decides is the effect of the practices on people: can an employee work, speak, make mistakes and learn without paying a price out of proportion to what they did?

Organisations differ in the degree of severity they accept. A team may accept firm deadlines and direct criticism of its work because the standards are announced and the criticism is aimed at the work and not at its owner. Severity alone is therefore not taken as evidence. What counts alongside it is what happens to someone who objects, makes a mistake or asks for clarification.

How a toxic workplace differs from harassment at work

Workplace harassment is a particular behaviour with its own concept and its own handling, which the glossary term on it covers. A toxic workplace is a wider description of a pattern of practices, and it may include behaviour of that kind or may not. Describing an environment as toxic does not yield a legal description of any incident, and the absence of the description does not show that the environment is sound. The two descriptions work at different levels: the first is a management description of a culture, and the second defines a specific behaviour.

It follows that a specific incident is dealt with through its own route, and that examining the environment remains the organisation’s task in understanding what recurs within it.

How a toxic workplace can be observed across an organisation

A toxic workplace does not announce itself. It is inferred from patterns that can be observed. Each of the following is a signal that deserves a question, and none is a judgement.

• Silence in meetings. One speaker dominates and the objector is absent, because an objection may cost its owner.
• Looking for who is responsible and not for the cause. When a mistake occurs, the first question is who did it, so reporting of mistakes may be delayed and their effect may grow before they surface.
• Tolerating erratic behaviour. A manager who flares up or humiliates people in front of the team is left alone because the results are good, and the team may learn that results excuse conduct.
• Visible favouritism. Opportunities and promotions go according to closeness to a person and not according to announced criteria.
• Withholding information. Individuals may keep what they know, because sharing it may weaken their position.
• Departures that cluster. Resignations concentrate in one department or under one manager and are not spread across the organisation.

Each signal may point to another cause: silence may come from the nature of crowded meetings, and a cluster of departures may come from an active market for a particular specialism. A single signal is therefore not enough. Several signals from different sources need to coincide before they are counted as a clue.

What does not indicate a toxic workplace on its own

A toxic workplace can be confused with situations that resemble it on the surface and do not mean the same thing. Pressing deadlines in a busy season may be a temporary and announced circumstance, and not a fixed pattern of behaviour. Two colleagues who disagree sharply in a single week may be an isolated incident and not a culture. Departures that rise in one department may come from market demand for its members’ specialism and not from what goes on inside it. A manager’s criticism of the quality of work may be part of announced expectations and not an expression of hostility.

The difference lies in repetition and in response. Does the same behaviour come back time after time? Does the organisation tolerate it when it appears? Can the person affected by it speak without paying a price? In our reading, an environment is described as toxic when repetition, tolerance and a cost to those who speak come together, and not when a single event occurs.

Where the evidence comes from

An organisation needs more than one source, because each source sees a part of the picture.

• The short survey. A pulse survey lets the organisation ask employees regularly about specific statements, such as their ability to tell their manager about a mistake they made, and the answers are compared between departments and between two periods.
• The interview on leaving. An exit interview may reveal what was not said during the work, because the person leaving no longer loses anything by being frank.
• Measuring departures. Voluntary turnover shows who left by their own decision, and it can be calculated for each department separately.
• Searching for the origin. Attrition root cause analysis traces cases of leaving back to the factor that actually produced them, instead of stopping at the reason written in the resignation letter.

These sources are examined together. The departure figure shows where the matter lies, the interviews show what it looks like, and the survey shows how far it extends among those who stayed.

A worked example of clues that coincide

Take a hypothetical organisation with two departments. The first has 40 employees, and 9 of them left by their own decision during a year, with an average headcount of 40. Its voluntary turnover rate is 9 ÷ 40 = 22.5%. The second department has 120 employees, and 12 left, so its rate is 12 ÷ 120 = 10%. The difference is 22.5 minus 10, which is 12.5 percentage points.

Employees were then asked in a pulse survey about one statement: “I can tell my manager about a mistake I made without fear.” In the first department 18 of 40 agreed, which is 18 ÷ 40 = 45%, and in the second 90 of 120 agreed, which is 90 ÷ 120 = 75%. In exit interviews, 6 of the 9 employees who left the first department named the manager’s behaviour as a reason, a share of 6 ÷ 9 = 66.7%.

The figures meet at a single place, which is what makes the question legitimate. The example is hypothetical, with figures set only to illustrate, and it has no reference in an organisation or a study. Small numbers like these may be affected by a passing circumstance, so they are not counted as proof. They indicate that the department deserves a deeper look before any conclusion. That the figures coincide does not mean that any particular person is described as toxic. What needs examining is the arrangement of work and accountability in the department, and not a judgement on an individual.

How a toxic workplace relates to psychological safety and burnout

Psychological safety is an employee’s belief that they can ask a question, admit a mistake or object without it being held against them. It is the counterpart of a toxic workplace: when it is missing, harmful practices may go unreported, because whoever sees them judges that speaking of them is costly. The absence of psychological safety alone does not mean that the environment is toxic, because it may be missing for different reasons.

Burnout is an effect that falls on an individual, a condition of exhaustion arising from chronic stress at work. A toxic workplace may be one of its causes, but it is not the only one: an employee may burn out in a sound environment because their load is excessive. This means the examination starts from the effect and ends with the question of its source.

What an organisation does when the clues appear

The first step is to understand the picture before changing anything. We suggest that the clues be gathered in one place and examined department by department and not across the whole organisation, because the environment may differ from one department to another. The response then follows where the matter lies.

• If it lies in accountability, the organisation reviews what is tolerated and why, and ties what is acceptable to behaviour and not to results alone.
• If it lies in the channels for speaking, the organisation considers opening routes by which an employee can say what they have to say, and what happens to what they say.
• If it lies in how opportunities are distributed, the criteria are announced and applied to everyone.

The proof of change remains what employees experience and not what management announces. If a change is announced and the same practice returns, the old picture may settle in their minds, and it may be hard to reverse.

How a toxic workplace is misunderstood

• Treating it as a description of a person. The concept describes an environment and its practices, and describing a person by it is a judgement that needs facts, and the adjective alone is not enough.
• Assuming that it means severity. A strict organisation with announced standards may not be toxic, and what counts is what happens to someone who makes a mistake or objects.
• Measuring it by employee satisfaction alone. An employee may be content with their own work while living in an environment that harms their colleagues.
• Addressing it with social events. It may leave unchanged what is tolerated in meetings and decisions.
• Waiting for reports. An employee may report nothing, because what stops them is the environment itself.

The point at which an environment becomes toxic

In the sources we reviewed, we found no numerical threshold and no accredited scale at which a work environment becomes toxic, and we do not propose a figure of our own. What counts as acceptable differs from one organisation to another with the nature of the work and the expectations of employees, and the concept is itself a description and not a standard. Likewise we found no source that we adopt for a particular share linking such an environment to the rate of departures, so no share is stated.

The concept remains a tool for examining an organisation and not a tool for judging it. It directs attention to what recurs in meetings, in decisions and in the movement of employees, and whatever is decided afterwards rests on several clues and on what employees themselves report.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.