Workplace toxicity: Tolerance for bad behaviour should stop now

Workplaces are becoming increasingly unmindful of essential considerations like employees' physical and mental well-being, dignity, inclusiveness, and even something as basic as value for human life. Image: Shutterstock

This week will go down as a sad one when I read on social media about this young professional who lost her life in four months of taking up a job that society would consider enviable. A document that is reported to be her grieving mother's letter to the employer chronicles her travail in detail. It makes for painful reading.

Not an isolated incident

This was not an isolated incident that had been reported. There was a video reportedly of an employee in a leading private sector bank being berated by his superior, followed closely by a similar report about an incident in a public sector bank and then a press report about the suicide by a young professional in a management consulting firm.  

Living in a place like Bengaluru, one frequently hears stories of the "toxic" atmosphere in many high-growth startups. It seems to flow all the way down from the top, as founders, in their frenzy to grow, transmit pressure all the way down to the last employee in the enterprise, starting with the CXOs.  

If topline growth brewed toxicity until two years ago, it is the pursuit of the bottom line that does so now. That makes it even worse as enterprises hunt for employees to let go in the name of cutting costs.

Not all startups are challenging to work in. There are several where the founders show a lot more sagacity even as they pursue topline growth or profitability. However, the number of firms that push their employees to unsustainable levels of performance is not trivial.

Behind the human cost of workplace toxicity

The point of all of this is simple: Workplaces are becoming increasingly unmindful of essential considerations like employees' physical and mental well-being, dignity, inclusiveness, and even something as basic as value for human life. The lofty statements in their charter documents rarely translate into day-to-day working conditions, as the mother's letter notes about her late daughter's employer.

Does a workplace have to be so? Must operational and financial excellence in enterprises be at the expense of human working conditions?  

As someone who has been fortunate enough to have observed a large number of organisations, I believe it need not be so. The unfortunate incidents we hear of are simply the result of sad human beings who believe they have an unquestionable right to behave badly with their junior colleagues. Of leaders and founders who believe that in the game of hyper-growth, as in love and war, all is fair. That a culture of roughness, rudeness and sheer insensitivity is par for the course.

Enough is enough

This insensitivity must stop. We must think of ways to ensure that employers who do not build a caring culture will not be able to attract quality talent, no matter how much money they spend.  

What is the way out? Ideally, employees at the receiving end of such toxicity should be able to walk away. Now, that is easy to prescribe. For many employees, though, their earnings put food on the plate for the family. In a country that is not quite raining jobs, it is risky to walk away from a job one has. Those Gen Z's who show the courage to do so must be admired.

Also read: How to handle a toxic boss

Educational institutions to take the lead

This is where educational institutions that are popular with recruiters and whose students are sought-after talent could take the lead. Based on feedback from alumni, students, and other relevant stakeholders, their placement offices could ensure that they invite only those employers who have a healthy atmosphere in their workplace. While inviting them to the placement exercise, they could seek written assurances that their graduates who join the recruiter will be afforded a dignified and decent working environment, apart from pay and career paths.

Employers that tolerate toxicity should be simply kept out of the recruitment process.  If these popular institutions start insisting that they would like their graduating students to join workplaces that value the health, mental well-being, and dignity of their employees, it would be an impactful way of setting the ball rolling.  

Leaning on technology

Thanks to technology, implementing such a process should not be difficult. For example, an app or portal that could be used across institutions and is committed exclusively to ensuring employee well-being might be a good starting point. Registered and verified alums from these institutions could share their job-related experiences and views anonymously without fear of reprisal.  

Once such an app stabilises across these select institutions, it could be rolled out to other educational institutions and turned into a platform for all employees and prospective employees to share their experiences and help rate employers.  

The important thing is to keep this app completely free from the influence of employers. That would be essential to making it a tool for ensuring employee welfare. That precisely is the concern I have about the apps that are currently available—one of them a well-known leader in this space—that they appear to be built around the employer.   

Looking at the frequency with which these incidents are said to have unfolded, one is tempted to draw on an old cliché: The best time to do something about this menace of workplace toxicity was a few years ago.  The second-best time is now.

G Sabarinathan is an Associate Professor in the Finance and Accounting area at IIM Bangalore. Views are strictly personal.

[This article has been published with permission from IIM Bangalore. www.iimb.ac.in Views expressed are personal.]