What to Do When Your Work Environment is Toxic
Should you stay or should you go now?
What’s Toxic to One Person May Not Be to Another…
Before labeling your work environment (or someone else’s) as “toxic”, it’s important to be aware that toxicity is to some extent, subjective. What's toxic to one person may not be toxic to another.
How do you know if your work environment is toxic?
Some environments are objectively toxic, meaning they're engaging in illegal or unethical activities (harassment, labor law violations, discrimination, lying, cheating, devaluing, etc.). These are universally harmful and toxic work environments.
On a more subjective level are things like poor communication, disrespect, low emotional IQ, poor leadership, low workplace morale, and negative overall environment.
When it comes to illegal activities and behavior, these need to be addressed with HR or members of law enforcement in some cases as there is often recourse that needs to be taken.
When a workplace is toxic, but not illegal, it can erode your well-being by contributing to a frustrating or demoralizing daily environment. Things like micromanagement, gossip, unacknowledged efforts, and unrealistic expectations can all contribute to a workplace being toxic for you and your coworkers.
In this blog, we’ll look at subjectively toxic environments and provide you with strategies to identify, overcome, or remove yourself from them entirely.
Defining Your Personal Moral Code
Reflecting on your values and boundaries helps you to define what you’re willing to tolerate and what you aren’t in your workplace. The goal is to identify and list behaviors that either align or clash with your personal values.
Write out examples of the things that bother you in your workplace when they occur.
Are you able to tease out and pull apart what it is about these situations that gets under your skin? Be sure to note things like how they make you feel, how they affect others, and how they impact your ability to do your job.
Do any of these things feel “fixable” or able to be addressed?
For the things that may not be changeable, what are you willing to tolerate and put up with and what crosses the line for your own personal boundaries and/or values?
These answers will help guide you forward in considering your next steps.
Taking Action and Dealing with a Toxic Workplace
Once you’ve realized a workplace is toxic, you essentially have one of three options:
Speak up. Address the situation or issues with a manager, HR, colleagues, or other related parties.
In deciding whether or not you’ll speak up, you may need to consider:
Who you’ll be speaking to and how best to approach the subject
How it might be received. Taking into consideration the company culture- will it help, be ignored, or potentially backfire?
How to frame the conversation appropriately and professionally
2. Walk away. In some cases, leaving the environment altogether might be the appropriate response. If this is the option you choose, there are other factors to consider such as planning a solid exit strategy and how to structure your job search (we’ll get more into that in a moment!).
3. Stay and put up with it. There are plenty of reasons and times that we may choose to remain quiet and deal with the current situation due to risks, finances, or other factors. If this is the decision, you’ll want to consider strategies for preventing burnout and ensuring you have tools for dealing with stress.
There’s no wrong choice!
The right choice will look different for all of us depending on our circumstances and our unique life journey. No friend or family member (who usually mean well) can make the decision for you because only you know the situation fully.
Each choice comes with its own list of pros and cons and can have repercussions that impact your short or long-term career. Here are some things to evaluate for yourself.
In most cases, if you walk away, you’ll want to do so with a plan. What will you do from here? You may need to begin searching for a new job, building up your financial cushion, and planning the path to your resignation. If your original plan fails, what’s the back up plan?
What could be the potential benefits and risks of speaking up? It can be beneficial to work with a Career Coach (like myself) to guide you in the conversational implications and help you practice what you’ll say and how.
Quiet Quitting: A Temporary Solution?
There’s a lot of negative talk around employees “quiet quitting” in the workplace. Quiet quitting is essentially doing the bare minimum required to stay employed and nothing beyond that. It’s become a more frequent occurrence and response to toxic environments where leaving or speaking up aren’t viable options.
Quiet quitting can help preserve your mental and emotional health in the short term, but even this approach can have long-term consequences on your career. In my opinion, it’s not a long-term solution and is something to rely on only if you’re beginning to implement a plan for what’s next.
Scaling back and simply meeting expectations has a place and can help reduce burnout. It can help you tolerate and navigate a toxic workplace environment temporarily, but it’s not something I’d rely on to solve your problem.
Make the Right Choice for YOU in a Toxic Work Environment
At the end of the day, you have to make a decision based on your own well-being, what you’re willing to put up with and deal with, and only you can choose what’s right for you.
Whether you decide to speak up, leave entirely, or take a step back, make sure you’re staying true to your personal moral code and values.
Need help navigating a tricky or toxic workplace situation? I can help!
