Quick and effective ways to improve a toxic work culture
Positive work culture
Toxic workplaces are more than just a collection of toxic individuals. Toxic workplaces are formed on the back of toxic individuals exhibiting toxic behaviour that can take the culture askew. The harmful norms slowly turn into something more common across the board, leading to burying camaraderie, optimism and energy within all staff managers.
A toxic workplace can kill productivity as well across the board. Employees do not feel satisfied with the work they do, which is why they aren’t giving the push they would otherwise deliver. As a manager in a toxic workplace, you can get in touch with an HR coach for guidance. If you are looking for immediate answers, you can also see the quick fixes here.
In this article, we take a look at some quick and highly effective ways to improve your toxic work culture. These tips have been devised with instructions from HR guides from over the globe.
Push responsibility down your organization
A number of organisations today are victims to the command and control methodology of micromanagement. Managers and supervisors micromanage stuff and dictate how things are done within the organisation. The high levels of micromanagement can lead to a toxic workplace, where employees never get to actually take the responsibility for their work.
You can change how these processes are managed by pushing responsibility down into your organisation. Grant autonomy to people in your organisation and see how your work culture drastically improves as a result of this.
Address underperformers
Your work culture can grow toxic and unproductive if you fail to address underperformers and put up with the dead weight for long. Even the high performers in your organization will notice that the underperformers are getting no stick for their poor work ethic, which will eventually lead them into underperforming as well.
You will definitely make more progress if you sit down with underperformers immediately and give them a short window to fix their issues after hearing them out. Don’t let underperformers disrupt the mechanisms of your workplace with their poor behaviour and work ethic.
Emphasise respect in interactions
According to prominent LinkedIn contributor and HR expert Tim Denning, organisations can improve a toxic work culture if they gain the respect of employees within the workplace. You should look to make sure that you have a generally respectful work culture where people interact with each other professionally and don’t pull each other down.
You should do the following to ensure success in improving respect and interaction across the board:
- Value professional interactions and make sure you set a standard that all staff members, including your management, adhere to.
- Recognize all good work from within the organization. Appreciate employees that perform well, even if it is consistent performance day in and out or a Herculean effort put up by someone on a particular day.
- Show compassion to staff members and sit down with them to rectify their problems.
- Remind staff that any/all forms of arguments, personal attacks and bullying will not be acceptable. Once you set these rules, make sure you follow up on them.
Be supportive and offer encouragement
Positive reinforcement can significantly improve the work culture in your organization. According to senior HR specialists, employees turn to toxic behaviour when they aren’t appreciated much and don’t find enough value for the efforts they put in.
Respect and encouragement are both very contagious and can get employees to be the same way to others around them. If you want to see support and encouragement in your team’s behaviour, you should set the tone from your end by being supportive of employee grievances and giving them encouragement when they need it the most.
Encourage feedback
The most toxic workplaces are usually those that don’t have a culture of feedback at all. If you want a culture of positive feedback and reinforcement, you should make sure that you encourage employees to provide feedback and give you positive reviews.
Work with your HR team to ensure that employees feel comfortable giving their feedback and aren’t berated for it if things don’t go to plan. You should have feedback forms readily available for employees so that they can work on it to report breaches and also signal improvements that would otherwise escape your eyes.
Dismantling a toxic workplace, using the tips we have mentioned here can help employees grow and can improve productivity within your business as a whole. You can work on these tips to implement a positive work culture where employees are actively asked to participate and there are no feuds between different employees.
