Work environment is crucial part in company’s success, a toxic environment not only results in increased stress in work life but also impacts the productivity of the company negatively .Organizations that have an ideal working culture and happy employees have three times the revenue growth compared to organizations where employees are not happy and satisfied . Negativity is contagious and one person’s bad behavior can completely destroy the environment in the office and hence it is important to address these social issues for your employees and ultimately for your company .
Here are some social issues that results a toxic working environment :
- GENDER INEQUALITY – Most common challenge that comes in a healthy workplace. Despite years of progressive efforts , there still a great deal of inequality. Many employee are still facing the inequality in unequal pay for the same amount of work , being promoted at work far less often than men or hiring or training only one gender for a particular role . This act as a barrier in the performance of your company , to promote gender equality ,you could establish policies for fair pay , work/life balance , give training to raise awareness , or try to put spotlight on successful women of your company .
- RACISM – Unfortunately , race still plays a major role in how employees are treated and compensated at workplace . Discriminatory policies built in an organization or discriminatory interactions between people impacts physical and mental health outcomes , If employees don’t feel supported at work, creativity and innovation suffers . Racial discrimination can also put the organization into legal question destroying the image and good will of the company too. For adopting a healthy work environment leaders should educate and train all members to recognize and tackle racism , treat the complaints with respect , take decisions in a fair and unbiased manner , do individual meetings for the feedback of their experience etc.
- SARCASTIC COMMENTS – Workplace is an environment where people with different personalities interact , People don’t realize how their one mean comment can impact someone for days and nights and impact them emotionally and mentally . it becomes quite difficult to work and encourage yourself in that environment , people start making excuses to avoid going to work and start planning to quit the job regardless of good pay and position they are in , it becomes toxic for them to work their . Organization should take necessary steps to avoid these situation in order to avoid loosing their talent .
- FAVOURITISM – Favoring someone not because of his great performance but for reasons outside of the job performance leads to number of negative results such as lower morale , missing out some talents and skills the other person brings to the table leading to lower productivity , and also leads to legal action and could end up costing company a lot . Creating a professional environment that actively discourages any kind of unfair treatment , as it is a very delicate situation posing a damage too great to be avoid .
- UNHEALTHY COMMUNICATION – Communication is the key to success but ineffective communication can be frustrating to employees and can ultimately lead to low morale and unachieved goals as it creates misunderstanding , missed opportunities , mistrust and conflicts . Unhealthy communication also burdens the employees and affect their future work performance . While effective communication helps to convey the ideas clearly so that the other person can understand it clearly and contributes positive to the organization .
Once you have recognized the signs of unhealthy work environment , you must act upon and eliminate your organizations issues . Toxicity at the workplace faces such issues daily , it can create conflicts , low morale , mental illness , excessive tension and negative results . You can deal with these problems by attracting root the problems and acknowledging them ,Small issues turn into huge problems if we ignore them at the early stage . Social issues in the office can account for most cases of high employee turnover rate and low retention .