Toxic Cultures in the Workplace, an article on identifying and preventing the problem, by Ten Percent Legal Recruitment, specialists for permanent and locum legal recruitment in the UK for solicitors.
As recruiters we very often see some of our clients have a problem in both recruiting and retaining staff. This can be for a number of reasons, whether an employer doesn’t particularly pay well, the location isn’t very good, but there is an overwhelming statistic in most work place environments where staff turnover is high that the workplace has a toxic culture.
Business Ethos
One of the things that comes up quite often for management consultants is looking at the culture of a workplace environment and seeing what the ethos of the business is. What type of management style does the management team have, what the relationship is like between the management team and the staff, what pressures everyone is under because of external factors affecting the business, how effective is the management team at getting the message of the type of culture the business has or the management team want the business to have, and do the employees within the business understand the culture and appreciate the manner in which business is done within the company.
Perceived Culture
A recent study found that one of the primary reasons for employees looking to move from one business to another is because of the perceived culture within the business. Toxic culture can be caused either by individuals making other employees’ life misery, or it can be the culture of the business itself. If the business spends a lot of time putting employees under pressure to achieve impossible billing targets or deadlines, the employees will almost certainly be looking for pastures new.
One Person Can Cause Mayhem
Quite often we see lawyers looking to move not because of the work they are doing or the location but because one of the owners or the senior management team is an absolute nightmare to work with. This is the second kind of toxic culture, where you have a member of staff or members of staff within your company who maybe very efficient at what they do, but cause other peoples’ lives to be a complete misery. Very often owners of businesses are not aware of this type of issue because it doesn’t necessarily come up or be detected by the owners or other senior management because nobody tells them. Similarly the person may be the highest billing fee earner.
However if you become aware as an owner or senior manager of someone within your business who is putting this kind of pressure on colleagues then you need to deal with the behaviour very quickly indeed. Failure to do so could cost you tens of thousands of pounds when you lose members of staff or even worse they take you to a tribunal because of the workplace environment.
Find the Problem
Dealing with a toxic culture in the workplace is a very difficult task because it’s not always obvious as to what’s causing the culture or how you deal with or address the behaviour behind it. However one thing is for sure and that is that if you do not deal either with the company culture to make it one that employees and customers can identify with or you do not root out any poor behaviour within your workforce, it will have a damaging effect on your company. Similarly think about your own culture – can anyone realistically achieve the targets you are setting and are they actually necessary to improve performance?
Summary
If you are not sure whether or not you have a toxic culture I would look at the turnover of staff in your business. If you have had staff working with you for decades and there doesn’t seem to be a problem in terms of age of staff, or new staff joining and then leaving quickly, then your workplace is probably a happy one. However if you have a rapid turnover of staff with most people only stopping within the business for up to two years before moving on then there is probably something wrong. Take a look at the whole business, define your culture and keep an eye on management colleagues to make sure they are not creating a toxic culture within.
