At nearly every company, there’s an employee who thinks their workplace is ‘toxic’. The term has become a catch-all to describe all sorts of work issues: major problems, such as unethical, abusive, discriminatory and even illegal behaviours; but also everyday issues, like cultures of long hours and burnout, or simple grievances with standard workplace policies.
Recent high profile reports of workplace toxicity have underscored the murky, imprecise definition of the word.
In August, pop star Lizzo was named in a lawsuit accusing her of creating a hostile work environment through “sexual, religious and racial harassment, disability discrimination, assault and false imprisonment”. In September, Rolling Stone described the American late-night talk show The Tonight Show as a “toxic workplace”, following complaints from staffers of a high pressure atmosphere, erratic behaviour of host Jimmy Fallon and bullying from senior leadership.
When ‘toxicity’ has swelled to mean so much, it subsequently has come to mean so little, too. Experts say the overuse and misattribution of the word can minimise or even mask real workplace issues. And that can create a whole new set of problems.
‘I don’t react when I see it now’
The term ‘toxic’ has a violent history. In ancient times, Scythian archers dipped their arrowheads into a mixture of blood, dung and snake venom. The Greeks called this ‘toxikon pharmakon’, loosely translated as ‘poisoned arrows’. Borrowed from Latin and French, ‘toxic’ was first recorded in English in the 17th Century to describe poison.
In the industrial era, ‘toxic’ was ascribed to workplaces with real toxins: hazardous materials and carcinogenic chemicals: the phrase ‘toxic environment’ was initially literal. According to the American Historical Association, the metaphor first emerged in nursing: a 1989 guide to leadership defined ‘toxic workplaces’ as those featuring conflict among roles, obscure goals and values, aggressive communication and scenarios in which staff are used like material resources.
During the following decades, ‘toxic’ slowly became ubiquitous: it was Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year in 2018, following the #MeToo movement and the spotlight on ‘toxic masculinity’ and harmful work environments.
Colleagues whispering to each other
In subsequent years, however, ‘toxic’ has been used to also describe everyday workplace annoyances, says Thomas Erikson, behavioural expert and author of Surrounded By Bad Bosses, based in Stockholm. “The word has gone into hyperinflation, often used to dramatically label situations that aren’t actually ‘poisonous’, but rather negative experiences with a lousy manager. ‘Toxic’ is so overused that I don’t react when I see it now.”
As opposed to an increasing prevalence of toxic workplaces, Erikson blames social media for popularising the term and taking it into overdrive.
While the technology creates more opportunities to expose genuinely harmful work environments, it can also encourage workers to share workplace grievances under a catch-all, self-perpetuating term, he says. “Exaggerations are often attention seeking. And everything spreads faster now: search ‘#toxicworkplace’, and you’re drowning in noise.”
Social media has meant more employees are able to connect about working conditions they won’t accept anymore – even those not necessarily toxic. And tolerance for perceived problematic workplaces has shrunk since the pandemic, says Natalie Norfus, managing owner at HR consultancy The Norfus Firm, based in Miami, US. “People have re-evaluated what work means to them, and questioned whether cultures of yelling, constant deadlines and burnout are really worth it. Fewer workers now have the energy for it – they’re now more willing to complain about matters they wouldn’t before.”
Masking bigger problems
Headlines continue to mark chaotic, fraught working atmospheres and unpredictable behaviour from star employees the same way as environments in which bosses faces legal claims over employee sexual harassment. While workers in both cases have made distinct, specific accusations about their workplaces, their wider reporting has fallen under the more general ‘toxic’ banner.
Lumping all workplace issues into the same ‘toxic’ bucket means the genuinely harmful environments may not be taken as seriously, says Donald Sull, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, based in Massachusetts, US. “It devalues the term: when everything you don’t like is ‘toxic’, it loses whatever rhetorical power it once had. And that’s harmful, because bosses see that word and it becomes easier for them to just dismiss it – that it’s a buzzword everyone uses.”
Sull also says the personality clashes that employees often label ‘toxic’ aren’t actually – and in some cases, these conflicts are important for success, particularly in competitive industries. He adds that innovative, agile workplaces often come with trade-offs. “In those situations, perhaps it’s better if leaders were transparent: less ‘we’re an innovative, cool startup changing the world’, more ‘if you want to work here, you’re going to have a bad work-life balance’.”
The catch-all ‘toxic’ term can be a crutch for workers, says Erikson, who may find it easier to reach for a vague label than have hard conversations with their manager. “If I call HR and say my manager is ‘toxic’, what does that actually mean? It becomes boy-who-cried-wolf. It’s calling people out, assigning blame and absolving yourself of responsibility, instead of sitting down with them, directly raising an issue and having a grown-up conversation about how you can both make things better.”
A better definition?
Sull’s March 2022 analysis of 1.4 million Glassdoor reviews written by US employees found the top five attributes of toxic workplace cultures – the terms that had the biggest negative impact on the website’s five-point scale – to be disrespectful, non-inclusive, unethical, cut-throat and abusive.
Based on the data, Sull says ‘toxic’ should be reserved for the most egregious behaviours that would be typically unacceptable inside or outside the workplace, like dishonesty and discrimination, which can break the law.
Humans have a baseline set of expectations when they arrive at work: to be respected and not excluded because of an attribute irrelevant to their ability,” says Sull. “When that’s violated, it triggers an extremely strong negative reaction – it breaks the psychological contract of work.”
While the bar to label a workplace ‘toxic’ should be high, says Sull, much of it comes down to trusting one’s gut instinct. “Dealing with the usual workplace bureaucracy is one thing, but it’s another if you get abused, belittled and disrespected in front of colleagues: you get a feeling in the pit of your stomach, stress and can’t forget about it at the end of the workday. Let’s leave ‘toxic’ for examples like that, and use terms like ‘irritations’, ‘disappointments’ and ‘frustrations’ for the usual workplace grumbles.”