Company culture can be loosely defined as the ethos a company tries to promote into its workers and work environments.
The terms “positive” and “negative” corporate culture is based on the influence which the operations of a company hold upon the wellbeing of its employees.
If a workplace is known for its toxic and negative environment, who would want to work there? Definitely, not me.
Many red flags show when there is a negative work culture, some of which are listed here:
POOR COMMUNICATION: Lack of communication or even inadequate communication, be it across teams, or between managers or down from the bosses to the employees, or the other way around, can hurt productivity, stifle ideas, and create a less than desirable working environment.
NO WORK-LIFE BALANCE: If the workforce of a company is “so busy with work” all the time and never has time for anything else, that’s a clear-cut sign of an awful company culture
ABUSE IS OKAY: Abuse can take many forms; harassment is just one of them. If a work environment is hyper-competitive & employees are incentivized to cut into each other just for a promotion, this can also be considered as abuse. If having thick skin is an unspoken but mandatory requirement, it can also be considered abuse.
RESULTS OVER PEOPLE: While all companies do need to keep metrics (revenue, losses, gains etc.) in mind when making decisions, if a company puts undue stress on sick or pregnant, or who are unable to perform their job duties efficiently for understandable humane reasons, that’s a sign of awful company culture.
MINDLESS CONTENT MILL: Some organizations expect employees to turn off their brains, churn out derivative, formula-based content about insubstantial stuff, day after day, month after month, with the employees not able to take pride in their work, or even add a personal touch to it leads to very negative work culture.
And some other various factors like:
Low pay with astronomical work expectations
Gossip and belittling
Resistance to change
Ranking employees against each other and the like can all lead to a negative culture in the workplace
Toxic or in other words negative culture will have adverse effects for the organization, ranging from high employee turnover, even to loss of profitability. In order to maintain a healthy work environment, organizations need to discover the exact problem areas, understand the root cause and put measures in place to rectify it.
Organizations cannot seek to create great followers under poor leadership
A company also needs to enable its leaders to take the right action to increase satisfaction, improve productivity and reduce employee turnover. Some measures that can be taken to source solutions could be in the form of questionnaires, polls, surveys and seeking direct informal opinions from employees.
All companies should endeavour to achieve a positive work culture and remove all obstacles in the path of achieving one, it will be of tremendous benefit in the long run, in helping the organization in achieving its goals.
Prasidhi Poddar
Digital Communications Associate