By Nation. Africa

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Whereas an individual or a company can offer you a decent and regular salary, that shouldn’t be the only reason you choose to work for them.

Your pursuit of earning a living shouldn’t come at the expense of your well-being due to toxic work environments.

According to Nancy Rothbard, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a toxic work environment is one where people at the bottom are experiencing corrosive pressures that are draining them and making them want to leave.

A toxic work environment bears a close resemblance to a toxic personal relationship.

Although distinguishing whether an environment is toxic or just tough can be challenging and subjective, here are well-known hallmarks that you use to identify whether your work environment is toxic or not.

Poor communication

According to a study done by Skynova, almost 40 per cent of the employees they interviewed consider poor or entirely lack proper communication the most significant contributor to a toxic work environment.

Signs of poor communication include employees receiving different messages, lack of clarity on projects, constant off-hours communications, communication done in a passive-aggressive manner, your hard work not receiving positive feedback, no recognition and employees not being listened to. When proper communication doesn’t happen at the workplace, employees tend to feel left out, resulting in a lack of trust, which makes working as a team next to impossible.

When there’s a lack of communication, the communication gaps are often filled with assumptions, misinformation or even gossip, leading to a very toxic work environment.

Results being valued more than people

Businesses need to meet specific targets and make profits to be sustainable and continue operation. As much as these are essential factors in making a business sustainable, it shouldn’t be priorities over the well-being of its employees. For instance, a work environment where employees are overworked, meant to work longer hours, denied leave, and asked to work over the weekend to enable a business to meet its targets is a very toxic environment that results in burnout, stress and resentment from employees.

Gossiping, the existence of cliques and exclusion of others

Whereas workplaces are not immune to office politics, they shouldn’t be places where people come to gossip and spread rumours about their colleagues.

Additionally, you might have noticed the existence of cliques that regularly hang out together, share inside jokes, get assigned tasks regardless of their experience and seem to exclude others from their circle. The existence of cliques at the workplace is very counterproductive. This, together with gossiping and rampant rumour mongering, are a sign of a toxic work environment.

Bullying at the workplace

Whereas bullying is often associated with children or students in school, it is still quite rampant at the workplace and often goes unaddressed.

Bullying at work can be in the form of humiliation and ridicule, withholding information relevant to someone’s employment or role, work sabotage, tasking someone with work below their competence or even ignoring an employee’s opinion.

According to a survey done by the Workplace Bullying Institute, 61 per cent of workplace bullies are bosses, while 33 per cent of them are peers of the same rank as their targets.

A workplace that entertains bullying is a toxic one and an environment you should avoid.