Toxic Workplace: Not A Love Story
High turnover, not enough clarity, low morale, and people calling in sick or not coming to work all the time. You’re tired, overworked, and always have a bad feeling about things.
If you feel all of these things, you might be working in a bad place. You may have heard this word before from people who work in different fields, industries, and organizations. But what exactly is a bad place to work?
This article will look at toxic work environments and explain what they are. We will talk about signs of toxic workplaces and how to figure out if your boss and coworkers are toxic.
We will talk about the differences between health and toxic workplaces, as well as the specific effects of toxic workplaces. Some of these signs are a high turnover rate, a lack of clarity, low morale, and coworkers who aren’t there.
When it comes to how it affects both students and professionals, toxic work in student affairs is especially common. Both will be looked at closely. Lastly, steps that people who work in toxic environments can take to reduce the bad effects will be shared and talked about. We’ll talk about what you can do to make things better.
What is a bad place to work?
Most people think that a toxic workplace is one where you might “hate” your job. Hate is a strong word, but just because you don’t like your job doesn’t make it a bad place to work. Toxic workplaces, on the other hand, make it hard, challenging, and sometimes even unbearable to be there. When you work in a toxic environment, you are constantly hit with these feelings without a break.
So, what exactly is a dangerous place to work? A toxic work environment is one where there is a lot of drama, insecurity, and conflict, all of which make it hard to get work done. Toxic workplaces are also places where these interruptions affect both your work and your personal life outside of work.
But a toxic workplace isn’t just caused by the way it looks. Instead, toxic workplaces are caused by toxic coworkers and employees, who are often driven by things like power, fame, or a special status. To get these things, these people use unethical or even illegal ways to control the people around them. Often, the things they do to get these gains are done to draw attention away from their own mistakes or poor performance.
This means that toxic workplaces are jobs where people contribute to a climate, culture, and atmosphere that causes problems at work and in your personal life. “Hostile work environments” are different from “toxic workplaces” because they include more things like severe harassment, unfair treatment, and other forms of disrespect that happen all the time.
Signs of a bad place of work
Whether or not a workplace is toxic depends on a number of factors. There is, of course, a difference between things that bother you at work and things that bother you just once. But a real toxic work environment is one where there is a lot of chaos and drama.
These signs can be seen in coworkers who talk too much, in bosses who are too strict, or in a lack of consistency in rules, duties, functions, and expectations. Which has an effect on your mental health. That’s because these toxic workplaces have a lot of problems that involve putting other people down, like passive-aggressive leadership and shady politics.
Have you seen any, some, or all of these things happen at work? If so, you might be working in a dangerous place.
Is my boss poisonous?
One of the most common signs that you are working in a toxic environment is if your boss is toxic. A toxic supervisor is someone who always makes you feel bad about yourself and makes it hard for you to do good work.
This is a sign of toxic leadership because they talk down to people and treat them badly. Some people even try to take credit for other people’s successes as a way to make themselves look better. Often, this comes at the cost of not getting any feedback, acknowledgment, or recognition. You may even work very hard for the company, office, or institution, only to be told that you should be happy to have a job at all.
Narcissism is, of course, one of the biggest signs that your boss is bad for you. One sign of a toxic boss is that they are focused on and satisfied by their own ego and how others see them and their work.
Do my coworkers make me sick?
Not just supervisors can be bad for you. Through their actions, coworkers often add to and complete a toxic work environment (or in some cases inaction). Toxic coworkers often don’t realize that they have a responsibility to the organization to treat others in an ethical or professional way.
Because of this, toxic coworkers can often bring down the work of the organization, office, or institution through their lack of motivation and focus on collective goals. As a result, it is very hard to get along with other coworkers in a toxic work environment. That’s because toxic coworkers don’t define their relationships with other people in the organization based on structure, but on who they like and who they don’t like, and as a result, who they trust and who they don’t trust.
This makes it very hard to work in a toxic environment. That’s because you should always be on the lookout for backstabbing, sneaky behavior, and other actions that could hurt your reputation at the office and in the institution.
Comparisons of a healthy work environment and a toxic one
So, what are the differences between a healthy work environment and a toxic one? The goals of the environment are some of the most important. The bosses and leaders of a healthy workplace will make sure everyone knows what the goals are. This doesn’t mean that ALL of your questions will be answered ALL of the time. But you know what your role is and where your office is going for the most part. On the other hand, toxic work environments often have goals that aren’t clear or haven’t been set by management.
In the same way, a healthy work environment has roles that are clear and agreed upon, and people know what their responsibilities are and how they will be judged based on those responsibilities. On the other hand, toxic work environments have responsibilities that are unclear, vague, or even at odds with each other. Because of this, the way your professional work is judged may change often.
Communication between management and coworkers is clear, helpful, and empathetic in a healthy work environment. The way people talk and act toward each other shows that they respect, understand, and care for each other. On the other hand, toxic work environments often have communication networks that are defensive, passive-aggressive, or hidden, so that the real meaning isn’t always clear.
In a healthy workplace, people make decisions together based on a lot of different ideas and coming to a consensus. This is especially true in higher education and student affairs work, where shared governance is a widely held idea. On the other hand, toxic work environments often have a top-down approach to making decisions and communicating, which puts power in the hands of only a few people.
Through dialogue, healthy work environments support and care for people’s feelings and emotions. On the other hand, toxic work environments don’t take coworkers’ feelings and emotions into account. As a result, coworkers often feel ignored and unimportant.
Listening, processing, and sharing are all important parts of a healthy work environment. This is often done through conversations in the community and regular events like coffee hours or social gatherings. On the other hand, toxic work environments are made up of people talking about their own thoughts and interests without taking anyone else into account.
In a healthy work environment, people are encouraged to talk about and solve problems as they come up. By doing this, you can make sure that these fights don’t hurt the community as a whole. In a toxic work environment, however, these conflicts aren’t even talked about, let alone solved.
Lastly, healthy work environments respect employees’ independence by giving them the freedom to do the tasks, assignments, and projects that have been given to them. On the other hand, toxic work environments force people to follow a set (and rigid) path to complete goals and assignments.
Effects of a polluted environment
There are other, deeper effects of working in a toxic place of business. There is a lot of turnover, there isn’t enough clarity, there isn’t enough feedback, morale is low, and there are a lot of sick days. In the sections that follow, we’ll talk about these qualities in more detail.
Many changes
When there is a lot of staff turnover, new people join the organization, office, or institution as the old ones leave. People are leaving the organization quickly if the turnover rate is high. That could be because they work in a bad environment that makes them unhappy and lowers their morale.
When an employee leaves, it can cause problems in the office if the transition isn’t handled properly. That means that the current employees could have low morale because they now have to do the tasks that their former colleague used to do.
This means that a quick resignation from an employee can be a sign of a toxic work environment and how it may be affecting the staff as a whole. Because there are so many and different entry-level jobs in the field of student affairs, high turnover is especially important. This is combined with the fact that there is often a lot of talent in the student affairs field, which makes it easier to fill open positions because of market demand. So, sometimes supervisors have no reason to fix a bad work environment because it’s easy to find new entry-level professionals in student affairs.
Not being clear
Lack of clarity is one of the most noticeable things about toxic workplaces. Sometimes this lack of clarity is about the mission or the day-to-day tasks. If you’ve started to notice some changes at work and you’re not sure why they’re happening, you may be working in a toxic environment.
Also, when you are given tasks, projects, or assignments to work on, they often seem vague and not very clear. Even worse is when you know you’ll be judged professionally based on how well you do on those assignments, but you haven’t been given any way to measure success.
You may also hear the phrases “that’s how it’s done around here” or “this is how we’ve always done it” used to explain some of the strange or inconsistent things that happen in your office. This lack of clarity is also a sign that you work in a toxic environment.
Often, new people who work in student affairs end up in these toxic workplaces because they haven’t seen these effects in other places of work. It’s common to work on projects that may not have clear results or in roles where the responsibilities are still being shaped and formed. But these aren’t good reasons for professionals in student affairs to take on more of the work of helping students. In order to help students, this means that professionals must do the work of 2, 3, or 4 other staff members.
This not only makes the work impossible to keep up in the long run, but it also encourages a bad work-life balance and the idea that people should always be available and working. Staff morale is often low when people have to work like this.
Low spirit
Toxic work environments don’t make people or the company as a whole want to be there. Because of this, nobody really says, “I love working there.” People usually look sad and unmotivated because of this. Because of low morale, even less work gets done, and the workplace becomes even more toxic.
This has a direct effect on how far employees can go in their careers because of the bad atmosphere of the toxic workplace, their coworkers, their boss, and the culture as a whole. As a result, the careers of many professionals could be derailed.
Toxic communication also spreads low morale throughout an organization. This is the kind of negative talk that coworkers have with each other and between themselves. Often, this kind of negativity comes to define the organization.
Poor call
As people call out sick from a toxic environment, this will eventually affect the employees’ physical health. This is because people who work in student affairs have to deal with more stress, pain, and trouble at work. In these tough work environments, it can also be hard to get the time off you need to deal with these problems.
This “snowball effect” is often caused by toxic work environments, which lead to a lot of negativity in the office, organization, and institution as a whole. Work in a toxic environment is tolerable for a short time, but in the long run, employees’ health gets worse, which means they call in sick more often.
Toxic issues in student life
Toxicity is probably one of the biggest reasons why people who work in student affairs abroad leave the field. Young professionals may find it hard to deal with both the bad parts of a toxic workplace and the hard parts of working in student affairs. Work in student affairs has become more difficult because fewer people are going to college, teaching and administrative staff have more responsibilities, and more support services have been given to student affairs professionals.
These are tough situations for anyone, but especially for entry-level student affairs professionals who are trying to uphold the values of holistic education while also meeting the practical needs of higher education administration and the needs of their own lives.
All of this is, of course, done by people who work in higher education. They have to balance all of these tasks while sometimes running part-time or full-time classes. Courses that go with a degree in higher education administration and/or student affairs often cost a lot of money.
As a result, people who work in student affairs tend to be held to very high standards. Some of these are the need to help students, to be an administrator, to move up in their careers, and to put personal and family life first while paying back student loans while their wages stay the same or stay flat. Because of these demands, tensions rise, toxic environments are made, and stress and anxiety get worse. Many people end up getting burned out and leaving the field because of this.
But this shouldn’t even worry people who hire entry-level student affairs professionals. As the number of graduate programs grew, so did the number of new administrators. This means there are too many people for too few jobs. This means that professionals who have jobs are more likely to want to keep them, even if they are toxic and promote old-fashioned social values.
Effects of a dangerous workplace
There are many different signs of a toxic work environment. Most of which are included in a lot of the work that student affairs does. This can happen even if employees now work from home, since toxic environments don’t have to be in a specific place.
One in five Americans, which is a record high, say that their workplaces are toxic. But, like many people who work in student affairs, they see them as necessary to keep making money and pay down debt. Because of this, professionals often reach burnout when their work starts to interfere with their personal lives.
These toxic and abusive work environments also cause important bonds between student affairs professionals and their coworkers to be damaged or broken. As a result, it’s harder to work together and help each other.
Steps to take
Realistically, realizing that your workplace is toxic is only the first step. If you find yourself in this situation, the best thing to do is to talk about it and then take the next steps toward a solution.
Management should give employees financial, moral, and cultural support so that a toxic work environment doesn’t start to form from the start. There are several ways to do this. One of the easiest ways to do this is to make it easier for employees to give feedback anonymously about abusive situations without worrying about getting in trouble.
From an organizational point of view, these are great things to do. From a personal point of view, the best thing to do is to focus on your own work and continue to be kind and respectful to others at work. By doing this, you can also learn to emotionally separate yourself from the situation by focusing on what you can control and letting go of what you can’t. This makes sure you don’t waste time worrying about things you can’t change. In the same way, this behavior makes it less likely that you will bring some of the bad effects of a toxic work environment home with you.
Also, think about taking time each day at work to go for a walk, meditate, or think about your own life. This practice gives you time and space to figure out how you feel about what’s going on without lashing out at your coworkers. This has the added benefit of putting the focus on what you can do as a person and professional.
Obviously, as an individual, you can only go so far. If you feel comfortable and open to the idea, you might want to connect with others and talk to them about the problems you face at work. These first people should be people you don’t know through your work. But if you feel comfortable, you could try talking to other coworkers who may feel the same way.
Talking about your thoughts and feelings can help you talk about the situation and decide what to do about it. Preventing a toxic workplace is, of course, the best thing to do. But if that’s not an option, you can always try networking to find other jobs in other places.
It can be hard to look for a new job while you are already working. But there are limits to how much a toxic work environment can hurt you emotionally, mentally, and physically. That means that leaving a toxic work environment is one of the best ways to fix it.
Takeaways
This article looked at and explained what a toxic workplace is. Along with toxic supervisors and coworkers, we talked about signs of toxic workplaces. We talked about both healthy and unhealthy workplaces and the signs of a toxic workplace. Some of these signs were high turnover, confusion, low morale, and coworkers who weren’t there. When it comes to how it affects both students and professionals, toxic work in student affairs is especially common. Lastly, steps to take for people who work in toxic environments were given. Actions you can take to recognize your situation and make it better were also talked about.
