Fight, flight, or hide: The three different strategies adopted by employees in a toxic workplace

We have all heard the term ‘toxic culture’ thrown around, but I will outline what I mean by this term. Toxicity in the workplace develops from a pattern of combined behaviours that are counterproductive. When promoted by toxic leadership, a toxic culture incorporates six specific behaviours:

• passive hostility
• shaming
• indifference
• team sabotage
• negativity
• exploitation

Toxic cultures are known to promote attitudes that adversely impact employees’ psychological wellbeing. Psychological wellbeing is also defined by six attributes:

• autonomy
• environment management
• personal growth
• positive relationships
• having life goals
• self- acceptance

In one particular study that considered the impact of a toxic workplace culture on psychological wellbeing, it determined, not surprisingly, that wellbeing is lower in employees who are exposed to toxic workplace cultures. What might be surprising is that almost 80% of workplaces met the criteria for toxicity! The researchers identified that there are three main strategies adopted by employees who are confronted with these toxic work environments:

Active rejection

These employees are the whistleblowers, the fighters against injustice, who take action against the toxicity of the workplace and see quitting as the last resort. These employees represent over one-third of the workforce.

Passive rejection

These employees are those who tend to hide their dissatisfaction from the perpetrators (usually the leadership) while sharing their dissatisfaction with their peers. These employees represent a staggering 40% of the workforce and perceive that all workplaces are toxic, so they remain passively disengaged because they are pessimistic. They believe that it is better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t!

Escapees

These are the ones who decide that it is easier to get out as quickly as possible, in some cases leaving the professional field. These employees represent the remaining 27% of the workforce and often react swiftly to toxic experiences of blatant harassment, threats and intimidation.

Employees with higher levels of psychological wellbeing are more likely to escape when the organisation toxicity worsens, whereas employees with the lowest psychological wellbeing are the most likely to become passive rejectors.

It isn’t that difficult to see why these numbers need our attention. If 80% of workplaces have a moderate to high toxicity, and 40% of those employees are passively disengaged, 33% are actively disrupting the workplace and 27% are actively looking for work elsewhere, then it really isn’t hard to understand why actively leading to reduce toxicity in the workplace should be the major goal of all compassionate leaders. 

The disenfranchisement of our human resources is leading to significantly reduced productivity, and this is silently eroding the profitability of businesses globally.

The Great Resignation

The Great Resignation is the mass exodus from the work environment observed post-pandemic. The term was coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at University College London’s School of Management, in May 2021.

The phenomena of the Great Resignation was first observed in 202 following the disruption to the way that we work thanks to the pandemic. In July 2021, a Gallup Poll revealed that almost half the American working population was actively looking for new roles. Business is facing a staggeringly high resignation rate and record numbers of unfilled positions. The United States’ quit rate — the number of employees who voluntarily resign, as opposed to as the result of redundancy or being fired–  is at its highest in over 20 years, hovering at almost 3% since early 2021.

Source: Supplied

There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but the primary reason is that the impact of the pandemic on people’s freedom meant that their discontent with life was linked with the employer that they were connected with at the time of the strongest lockdowns and control over their movements in society.

In Australia, we saw less of this movement until 2022, primarily due to the prolonged lockdowns, which affected our general sense of security and limited the number of people changing roles due to the need for stable employment. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ annual job mobility survey shows that Australians are on the move at their highest rate in over a decade: 9.5 per cent in 2022, up 2 per cent from 2021. Not surprisingly, the highest change was seen in Victoria, usually a reasonably stable state in terms of job mobility. As the state that experienced the most prolonged lockdowns around the pandemic, it went from 7.2 per cent in 2021 to a whopping 10.1 per cent in 2022.

In other countries like the United Kingdom, the statistics around economic inactivity give a clearer picture about the impact of the pandemic on the labour market. Since the start of 2021, there have been some alarming changes around economic inactivity (people who are not actively engaged in the workforce due to ill health, retirement, study, etc), despite an overall decline in the total number from 411 863 to 378 073, which on the surface would appear to be good news, certainly that is how the UK Government is espousing these numbers. However, when we dig into the data, we see some significant and alarming trends.

Kerry Howard is the author of How to Heal a Workplace: tackle trauma, foster psychological safety and boost happiness at work and is an in-demand strategic mental health advisor, motivational speaker, executive coach, trainer, facilitator, and best-selling author who helps senior leaders and their teams to improve workplace culture, build mental health literacy and boost productivity by creating happy, healthy workplaces.