Between April and September 2021, more than 24 million American employees left their jobs, which was a record. More than half of Canadian employees would rather quit their job than return to the office full-time. As the Great Resignation rolls on, leaders are looking for ways to keep valued employees amidst unprecedented change. While a desire for increased compensation and more flexibility are inspiring employees to rethink their jobs, a more insidious aspect of work is driving folks away: toxic culture (it’s 10 times more important than compensation in predicting turnover). Let’s explore three kinds of toxic culture and, as leaders, what we can do to change culture for good.

What is toxic culture?

MIT’s Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and Ben Zweig found that “the leading elements contributing to toxic cultures include failure to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; workers feeling disrespected; and unethical behavior.

After several conversations about what makes workplace culture toxic, here is a non-exhaustive list of red flags that employees and leaders alike need to recognize:

• When you hear ambiguous phrases like “you know, other people don’t think you can do this job, but I do” from your manager it reflects a lack of transparency and a tolerance for gossip
• Mistakes are met with eye-rolling commentary in the vein of “I am shocked by your cavalier attitude to sending confidential email”
• Rather than respond to a summary of weekly accomplishments with gratitude, you might hear: “I don’t need this princess report, everybody here is working really hard”
• Openly discussing confidential or sensitive information, such as salaries or disclosed mental health challenges, in team settings was cited as an example of what erodes trust
• A reason that toxic culture persists is because it is never addressed – in one interview I learned that an attempt by an employee to address bullying from their manager was handled by six human resources consultants in less than a year

According to Caterina Bettin, toxic cultures exist when “companies exploit workers with the sole goal of extracting value from them … capitalist organizations exercise total control over people’s lives by forcing us into meaningless jobs regulated by bureaucratic rules and fostering consumerism as a means to fill up our existential void and the loss of meaning that such alienating jobs generate.” When profitability is elevated at the expense of workers, organizations put themselves at risk of losing people because of an unsustainable, unsatisfying grind; however, purposeful, cool, and happy organizations also suffer from toxic cultures.

Toxic positivity

Toxic positivity is, according to Dr. Jaime Zuckerman, “the assumption, either by one’s self or others, that despite a person’s emotional pain or difficult situation they should only have a positive mindset or – my pet peeve – ‘positive vibes’.” Such a culture limits employees’ psychological safety, as “sending sunshine your way” does not jive well with sharing our discomfort, grief, or worry. Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant has thoughts on toxic positivity:

When folks feel uncomfortable sharing feelings other than ‘good vibes’, an organization will never realize its full potential. According to HBR’s Vasundhara Sawhney, “we need to not only feel, but also acknowledge our legitimate emotional responses to situations … efforts to avoid or ignore them can isolate us during times of need and perpetuate the stigma that mental health issues equate to weak-mindedness.” Around the world and across all industries, human beings are burning out (or have burned out) and many workers are expressing to colleagues, leaders, and benefits providers that they are not okay. If these moments are consistently met the expectation to focus on what is working and what is good in the world or a smiley “good vibes only” sentence, then toxic positivity is probably endemic to your culture.

Toxic innovation

Toxic innovation happens when employees sacrifice a manageable workload to stay at the bleeding edge of invention and improvement. While the work is often exciting, satisfying, and cool, it is causes more stress and requires folks to work at a faster pace. According to MIT’s Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and Ben Zweig, “during the Great Resignation, employees may be reconsidering the personal toll that relentless innovation takes … it is surprising that employees are more likely to exit from innovative companies.” The MIT research team found that, counterintuitively, “the more positively employees talked about innovation at their company, the more likely they were to quit.”

Toxic innovation also fuels unhealthy competition: “when employees talked about colleagues actively undermining one another, their comments strongly predicted a negative culture score.” If your culture is described as “everyone for themselves” or “Darwinian” and coworkers often “throw one another under the bus” in order to secure resources and advance their novel product or service, then toxic innovation is probably endemic to your culture.

Toxic purposefulness

Toxic purposefulness exists in values-based organizations that use outmoded, extractive management tactics to increase member or stakeholder benefits. Chasing quarterly metrics of efficiency, service, or return on member/funder equity sneakily replaces concepts like “maximize shareholder value” in many nonprofit, charitable, and cooperative organizations. Further, workers and leaders alike are drawn to purposeful organizations to make a positive impact in the world and, consequently, will work longer hours, endure more stress, and go without rewards because of their commitment to the cause. When capital-centric, as opposed to human-centric, managerial tactics are applied in purpose-driven organizations they create ethical tension and lead to burnout.

Sull and colleagues found that “managers frequently resort to layoffs and reorganizations when their company’s prospects are bleak … past layoffs, moreover, typically leave surviving employees with heavier workloads, which may increase their odds of leaving.” When layoffs and involuntarily turnover are used to cut costs, two things happen: first, employees feel ethical tension because purposeful organizations that commit to human-centric (if not employee-centric) practices are not living up to their values (few and far between are examples of executives taking pay cuts or workforces shifting to part-time schedules to keep the maximum number of employees during tough times); second, when folks leave – voluntarily or not – and the workload doesn’t change, the “surviving” employees are expected to take on more, which makes them more likely to leave or to burnout.

If you think to yourself once or twice per week, “this is really hard and I am struggling to stay afloat, but we’re making such a difference for our community” as you blearily stare at your screen or a growing backlog of calls, then toxic purposefulness is probably endemic to your culture.

Transforming toxic cultures

Here are three things that you can do to transform toxic culture in your worklife community.

Invest in career development

Signal how your organization supports career growth within the first week of employees joining the company. Workers are more likely to stay, and stay engaged, when they see that multiple potential career paths exist. High performing employees who are not recognized, perhaps with lateral career opportunities or learning experiences, are the most likely to grow resentful, which means organizations that do not invest in career development might lose some of their most productive workers.

Get social

Simple community-building experiences, such as happy hours, team-building excursions, potluck dinners, and other activities beyond the daily scope of work contribute to a healthy corporate culture. Sull and colleagues note that “organizing fun social events is a low-cost way to reinforce corporate culture as employees return to the office, and it strengthens employees’ personal connections to their team members.” One of the safest and healthiest cultures I ever helped build at work was during the pandemic and we carved out 45-minutes a month to play Among Us (because, ironically, colleagues who care about each other connecting to sabotage and murder each other builds a healthy sense of community?).

Blend flexibility with predictability

People want flexibility and autonomy so that we can pickup kids from school, run errands, and stay healthy. Folks also want to know when (or if) we are expected to travel to the office and where we are going to sit. Sull and colleagues found that “having a predictable schedule is six times more powerful in predicting front-line employee retention than having a flexible schedule.” While a predictable schedule has no predictive power for white-collar employees and remote work options yield a “relatively modest impact … on retention,” according to Sull and colleagues, if companies that are not clear on flexible and predictable schedules will need to differentiate themselves in other ways, such as career development, social experiences, and connections to community that cultivate a healthy purpose.