PREVIOUS : Corporate Cultures – PROBLEMS (#1)

SITE : “Is a toxic workplace warping your sense of what’s normal?”

Toxic work cultures express a disregard for employees, who are treated as objects that fulfill the company’s needs, not as people who have their own lives & families. It prevents employees from thriving. And while it may not kill them literally, it will negatively effect physical health (depression, burn-out, headaches….), as well as workplace ‘illnesses’ (lower productivity, infighting, complaining….), eventually driving them to look for a job elsewhere.

EMPLOYEE PROBLEMS
1. Candidates Judged for Culture Fit
❗️ Hiring for culture-fit is an outdated recruitment strategy that will cost you top talent. When looking foe carbon copies of your current employees, your culture will remain stagnant or start to decline. Like-minded individuals are great at agreeing, but tend to butt heads when it comes to pushing the envelope.

2.There’s a Culture of Unfriendly Competition
❗️ Having competition as the focal point of your culture will breed animosity between employees. It can also lead to a negative culture founded on competition and animosity between employees.

3.Employees NOT Acknowledged & Rewarded
❗️ Only occasionally rewarding a few individuals (like a top sales rep of each quarter) will make the majority of the workforce feel undervalued & under-appreciated – doing your culture a disservice. It can also lead to competition & animosity between employees.

4.Employees Are Often Tardy or Absent
❗️ Excessive lateness &/or high rates of absenteeism are clear signs of a poor company culture. Employee’s tardiness indicates either that they’re lazy or disengaged. If they’re often out-of-office (remote or flex-schedule employees being the exception) they’re likely disinterested & not passionate about their work.

5.People Work Through Lunch
❗️ If employees often work through lunch, it’s either because they feel they don’t have time to stop working, or believe management doesn’t condone taking breaks. Not only is it a surefire way to turn employees away, but also poor business logic — 81% of employees who regularly break for lunch are active members of their organization.
Expecting employees to perform well while working eight hours nonstop is unrealistic & ridiculous. Besides, it signals that leadership only values their work output, not their contribution to the culture or personal commitment to the organization.

6. People Work Late or on Weekends
❗️ If the work day ends at 5:00 p.m. but the majority of your team regularly stays well past, that should be cause for concern. This indicates that your staff are either juggling too many responsibilities, or managers have unrealistic expectations for their direct reports. Quotas help ensure your growth plan stays on track, but impractical objectives will lead to employee burnout.

7. Office Gossip Runs Rampant
❗️ It wasn’t cool in middle school, & certainly isn’t appropriate in the office. Gossip leads to unwanted cliques that divide the workforce, turning employees against each other, which creates a culture of distrust.

8. Teams Are Siloed
❗️ Lack of communication is a definite indicator of a toxic culture. Across teams or between managers & direct reports, the way information does or does not flow can impact a company’s culture as well as its bottom line. When employees aren’t communicating properly, it can hurt productivity, stifle ideas, & create a less desirable working environment.

9.Teams See High Turnover
❗️ High turnover is almost always a guaranteed sign of a toxic company culture. Not only will it drive employees away, it will also deter job seekers from taking your organization seriously. More than one-third of U.S. employees say they would turn down the perfect job if they thought the culture wasn’t a good fit for them. If you’re saying goodbye to employees left & right, they’re probably looking for a less toxic work environment.

ALSO – The Company Doesn’t Give Back to the Community
❗️Problem: If the company doesn’t have a matching program for charitable donations, doesn’t offer a yearly day of service for volunteer work, never issues calls for donations in the wake of a devastating hurricane or other disaster….  you’re sending the message that as a company, you just don’t care about the outside world.

NEXT : Corporate Cultures – Positive