When business teams work together well, the workplace can be a place of inspiration, support and satisfaction. But it’s a fine line between harmony and toxicity.
A toxic workplace is not a good situation for employers or workers, but there are solutions and strategies you can put in place to keep a healthy work culture.
Perhaps you are a business leader seeing signs of toxicity in the workplace and are wanting to seek remedies fast, or an employee looking to simply cope with a toxic workplace. In this article, we’ll look at what is a toxic workplace culture, the warning signs of toxicity in working environments, infamous examples from corporate culture (hello, Brewdog), and—most importantly—how to fix a toxic workplace culture once you spot the warning signs.
Read on to find out more about solving and surviving a toxic work culture. We’ll cover:
01 - What is a Toxic Workplace Culture?
What is a toxic workplace culture, in terms of how it looks to employers, employees and outside customers?
A toxic workplace culture refers to an unhealthy work environment that has a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of employees, productivity and can also impact on company success and revenue. A ‘revolving door’ of high employee turnover, unethical practices, poor communication and low morale are the most obvious tells of toxicity from within, but a toxic work culture can also have hugely damaging effects on external factors that are vital to business success, such as company reputation and customer engagement.
If you suspect that your work culture is reflective of internal issues or a toxic company, it’s important for leadership to act fast and effectively to remedy the issue as much as possible.
02 - What are the Warning Signs of a Toxic Workplace Culture?
No business owner wants to learn that their workplace is unhealthy or cultivating a toxic environment for employees. However, the first step in addressing a toxic culture is to actively look for the signs before the situation escalates beyond repair. Here are some of the most common warning signs of a toxic workplace:
Everyone is stressed and/or disengaged
If employees are regularly working late, at weekends or through lunch hours, this is a clear sign that workers feel over-stretched and are expected to achieve standards in their work that are unattainable during normal working hours.
We now know a lot more about the impact of workplace stress on individuals, which can have far-ranging consequences from ill health and burnout, to even PTSD in extreme cases. Stress breeds toxicity, because quite frankly, who wants to be stressed all the time?
Disengagement, in which workers appear to be tuning out of the workplace or no longer attending work social events, is also a sign that people are simply trying to survive a toxic workplace and using coping mechanisms to get through the working day.
Office gossip is rife
There’s no smoke without fire, and in the case of toxic workplaces the smoke is gossip mongering. One of the main perks of a healthy office culture is opportunities for socialising, but when this tips into excessive or malicious gossip, you know there is toxicity afoot.
A dysfunctional workplace is often marred by gossip aimed at making other employees feel uncomfortable, but it may also point to serious incidents that are going unmonitored, such as discrimination or workplace bullying.
A high employee turnover
If your business seems to be cursed with a revolving door of employees leaving frequently, this is a probable sign of a toxic workplace environment.
A lack of mutual support between employees and teams
If it’s clear that workers are in constant competition with one another, undercutting or even sabotaging other people’s efforts at work, this is detrimental to team productivity and is a sign of a lack of adequate support at management level.
Competition shouldn’t be necessary to keep teams motivated, so it’s best to replace a competitive atmosphere with collaborative team spirit instead.
Poor communication at all levels
In a healthy work environment, an individual at any level within a company should feel they can speak up about an issue and be listened to by colleagues and leadership. If people feel unable to speak for fear of repercussions or simply that a query will go unanswered, communication channels within the company are broken, and will likely lead to a faction mentality or high staff turnover.
Work ‘perks’ are no longer enough to maintain morale
Some companies introduce perks to boost team morale, but if improvements in social opportunities, memberships or bonus schemes don’t seem to be leading to more motivation, it’s likely the workplace toxicity is well-embedded and any newly introduced perks will simply act as a sticking plaster rather than a solution.
Extreme sign: Bad hires have been brought in at leadership level
Bad hires are one of the most common causes of toxic workplace cultures, bringing the expression ‘one bad apple’ to mind. A bad hire at leadership level can be particularly damaging, having a trickle-down effect that will transfer stress and other behavioural traits down the line of command. Just look at well-known examples of toxic workplace culture, such as The Ellen DeGeneres Show and WeWork, to realise that a toxic culture can spread from poor leadership.
To avoid a bad hire at high level, it’s crucial to background screen candidates before you take them to interview stage, using a tool like YOONO to assess how they present themselves online and their background in employment and education.
Extreme sign: Corporate reputation is suffering
When people external to your company start to know more about your business’ unhealthy or controversial workplace than the products or services you sell, then you know you have a serious toxic culture problem.
If your company’s online reputation is suffering, with social media swirling or negative press coverage, it can be recovered (just look at BrewDog’s extraordinary turnaround), but it will require a complete reconsideration of how to audit new staff and how to refashion the work culture from top to bottom.
03 - What are Examples of Famous Toxic Workplaces?
Perhaps infamous is a better term to use for these well-known examples of toxic work cultures. In some cases, such as that of WeWork, the toxicity in the workplace was so extreme that it sank the company, while other businesses, like BrewDog, have made remarkable comebacks from toxic workplace scandals to create altogether better places to work.
WeWork
The founders of global coworking company WeWork faced allegations of a poisonous workplace culture and sexual abuse allegations, which led to the founder and ex-CEO Adam Neumann stepping down from the company in disgrace in 2019 and WeWork filing for bankruptcy in 2023.
Neumann has been back in the news recently, promising a possible comeback and a new leadership style for WeWork, so watch this space.
BrewDog
Aberdeen’s punk-styled mega-brewery was founded around ideas of taking independent, craft beer to the masses, but the company’s initial success was marred by rumours of a toxic workplace culture, which resulted in an open letter circulating on Twitter (X) in 2021, signed by 61 workers alleging bullying, discrimination and a ‘culture of fear’ at the company. The following year, a damning BBC documentary, ‘The Truth About BrewDog’, revealed more disturbing allegations of a misogynistic and toxic culture.
In more recent developments, BrewDog seem to have managed to steer out of the scandal with gung-ho, landing a place on the Sunday Times’ Best Places to Work list in 2023.
Metropolitan Police
One of the darkest toxic workplace scandals of recent years is the exposure of institutionalised racism, homophobia and sexism within the Metropolitan Police.
The toxic workplace scandal at the Met seems to be ongoing, with the organisation accused in 2024 of failing to address toxic culture claims in the firearms unit, despite a series of internal misconduct reviews being initiated since 2018.
The Ellen Show
Show business is known to be cut-throat, but the toxic culture allegations that came to light in relation to Ellen DeGeneres’ daytime talk show, led by Buzzfeed News, captured huge media attention in 2020 for its two-faced hypocrisy.
Ellen founded the brand on the motto ‘be kind’, but it became clear that this was rarely practiced, with employees claiming they faced racism, intimidation and a toxic culture of fear on a daily basis. DeGeneres ended the show in 2022, later joking that she was kicked out of show business for being ‘mean’.
Strictly Come Dancing
Toxic culture examples seem to be increasingly easy to find in the world of show business, with the BBC’s much-loved dance show, Strictly Come Dancing, also becoming subject to accusations of workplace toxicity from employees and celebrity participants in 2024.
A number of former celebrity contestants, including Amanda Abbington, Zara McDermott and Laura Whitmore, have alleged mistreatment during their time on the show, with a particularly shocking video of McDermott being kicked by dance partner Graziano Di Prima during a training session.
Runners on the show have also attested to a toxic culture behind the scenes, alleging harassment, bullying and excessive stress.
04 - How to Fix a Toxic Workplace Culture
Now that we've identified the signs of a toxic workplace, let's explore effective methods to transform your company's culture into a positive and productive environment. Here you’ll find helpful ideas and strategies for tackling a toxic culture if you’re a business owner or employee.
Spend time observing
Perhaps you’ve heard rumours of a toxic work culture, or have seen some evidence of possible toxicity in action. Either way, your first step in fixing a toxic workplace is to simply observe what is actually happening. For leadership, this may involve taking a more active role ‘on the floor’, observing team meetings and attending more office events, to get a real sense of the culture on the ground.
When a business owner learns that they may have a toxic company culture on their hands, initial reactions may include denial (burying heads in the sand) or the extreme opposite, by trying to tackle the problem instantly, without educating themselves about the cultural complexities at play. Having some time, whether weeks or months, to assess the scale and severity of the toxicity is a wise first step before leaping into action.
It may be useful at this stage to also background screen workers or potential candidates, to identify possible individuals contributing to a toxic culture. You’ll be able to see evidence of their behaviour on their social media channels and online output.
Identify patterns of behaviour
Every company—even a toxic one—has routines and rhythms that can be analysed and quantified. How frequently do toxic incidents occur and how severe are they? Do the same individuals, teams or departments make an appearance in relation to a number of these incidents? What are the underlying factors behind each individual incident, however small?
Keep in mind that these underlying factors are not always immediately obvious, and can appear unrelated to the manifestation of toxic behaviour. If you approach the issue of a toxic workplace in the mindset of an anthropologist or sociologist, you can really get to the heart of the issue, and gain insights into the specific causes behind a wider toxic culture.
Open up communication channels
Once you have observed and identified patterns of behaviour you believe to be contributing to a toxic work environment, you can begin to open up channels of communication, inviting members of the organisation to talk freely (but confidentially, if necessary) about their experience of working in the company environment.
This can be an eye-opening but also difficult step for any CEO or business leader to undertake, as unfortunate truths may be revealed in the process, but there is really nothing more important than for a company to communicate to its members that they should feel able to speak openly about existing issues without fear of any consequences, whether that is risking job security or revealing their opinions to a wider group.
See internal resolution as, if not more, important than external reputation
What is clear from some of the famous infamous examples of toxic workplace cultures discussed above, is that by the point the scandal has hit the newsstands it is often far too late for company leadership to rectify the problem internally. All energy then has to be diverted into managing the reputational fallout of the scandal, at the expense of solving the toxic culture that is likely still in place.
Although it is tempting to throw yourself into PR damage recovery, companies often neglect the fact that it is far more important in the long-term to seek internal solutions to the problem, and work gradually to revolve a toxic culture from within the organisation. Many companies do recover from a toxic workplace culture, but it can take time, energy and thoughtful action to make the recovery long-lasting.
Put a plan-of-action in place and set a timeline for change
Once you have identified a toxic workplace culture and its symptoms, you can start to build a plan-of-action for dealing with the issue and create benchmarks for stages of recovery.
Begin by drafting a list of all of the contributing factors to the toxic environment that you and others have observed. Now organise the list from most urgent to least urgent, and which factors will require internal or external intervention. Obviously, serious factors like discrimination or misogyny need to be dealt with imminently, and may involve outside parties, while less serious issues which are nonetheless contributing to a toxic culture can be dealt with internally.
Eradicating a toxic work culture can take time and is not an overnight process, so it’s important to set a timeline for change whereby you can assess the level of progress that is being made. For less potent toxic cultures, a lot of progress can be made in just a few weeks or months, but for more serious or institutionalised toxic cultures, it can take a number of years for real improvements to be made.
The other important thing to do is to keep everyone within the company informed about the changes being made. This will help reassure employees that their concerns are being listened to, and also helps to put across a strong message of openness going forward.
How to Thrive at Work: Transforming a Toxic Work Culture into a Healthy Working Environment
It’s very rare that anyone sets out to create a toxic work culture, with rather numerous factors usually contributing to a poor working environment. Business owners should be reassured that toxic work environment characteristics can be identified and eradicated through employing a plan of careful observation, considerate communication and a timeline of actionable change.
Nobody wants to work in a dysfunctional workplace, but the good news is that changing a toxic work culture is far from impossible.
If you have concerns about leadership, management or bad hires causing toxic workplace issues at your organisation, you can use a screening tool like YOONO to assess the damage and gain actionable insights for moving forward.
Try YOONO today at no initial cost and run reports on individuals, bringing you enlightening and instant information about their online persona. Avoid future poor hires and keep your work culture healthy from the get-go.
