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Most of us are on the lookout for red flags in romantic relationships, keen to avoid finding ourselves paired with a toxic partner. However, we don’t often apply the same vigilance to avoiding toxic work environments, even though feeling trapped in a toxic workplace can have far greater consequences.
We’ve listed the top five red flags you should look for within a workplace to avoid toxic work culture and its severe impacts on your mental, emotional, and physical well-being as an employee.
Lacking Civility And Respect
It’s crucial for any workplace to have a culture that boasts civility and respect. These two elements are essential in most aspects of life, but even more so in the workplace.
Studies show that work environments that lack elements like consideration, dignity, courtesy, and general respect are highly likely to fit into the toxic work culture category.
Non-Inclusivity
In today’s modern world, there’s a blatant need for diversity and representation within all work environments. Unfortunately, those that lack inclusivity also tend to have a higher chance of being toxic.
Where inclusivity is present, a space is created in which all employees are treated fairly and feel welcome in the space.
On the other hand, when diversity and inclusivity are absent, minority and protected classes feel overpowered and typically experience the pits of discrimination within the workplace. With this, if you are experiencing discrimination at work, consult an employment lawyer at HKM.com to dissolve the situation and evaluate your case.
Lousy Ethics
Ethics are a fundamental pillar of positive work culture. Without ethics, work environments quickly become toxic, dishonesty, unethical behaviors, and a lack of compliance become more blatant.
Highly Competitive Nature
Even though some level of cooperative and collaborative competition needs to be present within a workforce, high levels of competition that fuel negative behaviors are undoubtedly toxic.
Co-workers should function as working components of the same engine rather than individuals attempting to surpass one another for self-gain.
When high levels of competition are recorded within a workplace, the culture typically proves toxic in other ways too.
Abusive Management
The last and often the most blatant red flag of a toxic work environment is abusive management. This red flag shows itself as yelling, shouting, aggressive behaviors, and degrading subordinates.
There’s never a need for management to degrade and belittle employees; this abusive behavior is toxic regardless of the backing excuse.
Ideally, management employees should be encouraging, kind, understanding, and encouraging. As the iconic saying goes, “a great leader is one who leads by example, knows the way, and shows the way.”
Knowing the signs of toxic work culture is crucial to avoid finding yourself trapped within these daunting environments. Within toxic work environments, harassment, discrimination, bullying, and worker exploitation are often visible.
Even though you can file a complaint internally or consult an employment lawyer to seek compensation for the experience, it’s best to avoid these environments altogether because the impacts will eat away at your emotional and mental health.