HR – Post and response – Do you Work in a Toxic Culture?
A toxic culture can not only be depressing and demoralizing to work on, but they also lead to employee turnover (and even harassment). New research in Industrial/Organizational Psychology about the “dark triad” has been interesting about some of the employee personality characteristics that can lead to these toxic cultures. Read/watch these resources and share your thoughts on these questions: What does a toxic culture look like in terms of employee behaviors? What does it look like in terms of employee outcomes? How can organizations combat a toxic culture? What can we do in HR to fix this problem?
Fixing a Toxic Work Culture article
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/fixing-a-toxic-work-culture-guarding-against-dark-triad
A Toxic Work Culture is Forcing High Performing People to Quit
https://medium.com/swlh/a-toxic-work-culture-is-forcing-high-performing-people-to-quit-ebe34daf202b
TED Talk on Changing your Culture
Keep Your Company’s Toxic Culture from Infecting your Team
https://hbr.org/2019/04/keep-your-companys-toxic-culture-from-infecting-your-team
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7 hours ago
Zachary Rogers
DB5
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What does a toxic culture look like in terms of employee behaviors?
In terms of my own experiences, toxic culture can be a lot more subtle than the readings would have you believe. For some it might become apparent quickly after hiring into the organization, for others the organization may have taken a subtle downward turn in its every day culture and developed around otherwise well intentioned, loyal, and engaged employees.
The first thing I look at is the leadership of the organization. Yes they are employees too. Are they setting direction? Do they have a strategy? Do they allow autonomy of decision making in their middle management? What kind of metrics are they setting? Would they rather haggle over colors and powerpoint structure in lieu of providing guidance? I think you get the drift.
In terms of lower employee behavior, youll see disengaged associates. And while not technically a term, youll see something I like to call negative engagement. People, some aware and others not, whose behavior is actively working against their personal goals and the goals of the organization. These are people who dont receive recognition and they certainly dont give it. Youll find people that lack foresight to do much other than offer reasons why things wont work. Probably because they arent receiving any real direction. Youll find a lot of talk about what should be but not a lot of action. Lack of decision making, and likely some entitlement among those that have stuck it out long enough to acclimate (management). Youll find favoritism towards those that are willing to swallow the kool-aid. Authoritarianism. Lack of Planning. Low involvement too. (Mejia, 2017).
What does it look like in terms of employee outcomes?
According to the text, Job Withdrawal is what to look for in toxic employees. Dissatisfaction whether by personal disposition, tasks and roles, supervisors and co-workers, or pay and benefits may lead to somebody withdrawing from their role. You can see this in behavior changes such a physical withdrawal through attendance and absenteeism, or psychological withdrawal where they just arent engaging with the company culture or putting full effort into their work anymore. This is called Job Involvement. The text suggests looking for this in the amount of company terminology and usage of, although I personally find this kind of weird.
How can organizations combat a toxic culture? What can we do in HR to fix this problem?
First off, the book is way too transactional about this topic. The introductory chapter was 60 pages. Chapter ten isnt even half that and people make entire careers out of this.
Id personally recommend not trying to combat a toxic culture alone. Ive met toxic people, when the causes are not the workplace, these toxies stick out like a sore thumb. Handling these people through Progressive Discipline is often the way to go.
When the organization is what has soured though, you need to measure satisfaction, commonly called engagement. This will give you a baseline. Compare this to industry benchmarks and find out, is it you or is this how things are everywhere? Are you comfortable if you come in above the baseline, or do you still want to improve things? If youre below board, how much effort are you willing to put in? Are your executives on board for such a massive change initiative or is this going to be just another HR initiative?
If youre going for it, then kudos. Create your timeline, then double or triple it. Build it to be sustainable. Get buy-in. Train champions on how to identify issues and stage intervention. Hold leaders accountable. Make sure that your survey is measuring leader behavior. Get your executives on board.
Also, were heading into an election year in an unstable economic environment. A lot of companies have abandoned satisfaction and engagement measurement as its highly effected by external variables (LaMotte, 2015) and generally, people arent real happy right now.
REFERENCES:
LaMotte, S. (2015, January 13). Employee engagement depends on what happens outside the office. Retrieved from:
https://hbr.org/2015/01/employee-engagement-depends-on-what-happens-outside-of-the-office
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Mejia, Z. (2017, December 15). 11 signs your workplaces culture is toxic (and what you can do to be happier). Retrieved from:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/15/11-traits-of-a-toxic-workplace-and-how-to-be-happier.html
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19 hours ago
Janet Maloy
DB Post 5-Toxic Culture
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As mentioned in the HBR article Keep Your Company’s Toxic Culture from Infecting Your Team, culture is a powerful driver of behavior (McKee, 2019) . If the culture of your organization is a toxic one you can expect to that employees are going to start showing the effects through dissatisfaction and withdrawal. Withdrawal can be through psychological disengagement, or physical withdrawal represented by absenteeism or by employee turnover, all of which have negative impacts on the organizations (Noe et al, 2019).
If an organization is in need of a systemic change of culture, there has to be top-down change through reinforcing of values and behaviors that are true to the company that you are trying to create. These values have to be supported by actions. In the case of Wells Fargo described in the text, all of the training and paperwork supported the value of transparency in sales and customer accounts, but the actions of Managers and Leadership did not support those values (Noe et al, 2019). Leadership needs to speak of the values often and encourage managers to communicate how those values translate into action for the workforce.
As an organization attempts to improve culture it is important to monitor and measure how that change is impacting the workforce. This can be done through engagement surveys anonymously, or it can be through small listening sessions. My CHRO has started the practice of having these breakout discussions on an annual basis. She then consolidates responses from these sessions, and uses this information, in addition to several different surveys throughout the year to help map out the major goals that she sets with leadership that drive the direction of the organization. Currently this is only the second round of these discussions that I have participated in, but the result so far has been very open and conversational, to allow the employees to share ideas and items the company should work on. These surveys and listening sessions are an important tool for HR to fix culture issues and start to change an organization from within, but the first step is acknowledging the culture issues that exist.
McKee, A. (2019, April 19). Keep Your Company’s Toxic Culture from Infecting Your Team. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://hbr.org/2019/04/keep-your-companys-toxic-culture-from-infecting-your-team?autocomplete=true
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R & Gerhart, B. A. (2019).Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
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1 day ago
Daniel Champeau
Week 5 Discussion
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A toxic work culture can be seen in many different ways. Areas that need to be looked at is what kind of competitive culture has been established and is practiced at the organization. A reliable sign of a toxic culture in an organization will show signs of people willing to step over other associates to reach their goals and not support others. There are other areas to watch for, people blaming others, overly critical of teammates, and people that do not share information to others.
When we are in an environment surrounded by toxicity it is very hard to maximize performance. A toxic culture shows itself in a way of reduced outcomes. The employees will be working at a percentage of what they have in potential due to them watching their back and feeling that they are being judged every step of the way.
I inherited a department that exhibited these traits and I knew it would require me to make some major changes to help reduce the toxic atmosphere. The first thing I realized was that my team was very guarded with telling me what they were doing. There was a history of the previous manager just taking the credit for everything the team was doing. The first opportunity I had, I made it a priority to give credit to the individual engineer that was working on a project but also invited her to speak to the progress to the staff. When I introduced her, I said that she was doing a great job on the project and let her speak to where she was. From there, it spread quickly that I was not one to take credit, I would always give credit. It happened a couple of more times and I was consistent in bringing the team together and having them tell me and the team where they are in the projects. The meetings were safe, and I took a couple of minutes and explained to them the following, As a department manager, I get credit automatically for the successes of my team. My job is to make sure that you (engineers) are given the opportunity to see the benefits and the credit for your work. From that point on I have not had an issue in getting teammates to work together and support one another. This was a true example of a top down impact on a toxic environment and how it was combated to greatly improve the environment quickly and easily.
Relihan, T. (2019, April 29). Fixing a toxic work culture: Guarding against the ‘dark triad’. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/fixing-a-toxic-work-culture-guarding-against-dark-triad
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