Toxic workplace checklist: 17 red flags that make a work environment “toxic” and how to address them

Workplace culture is the foundation of organizational success. Yet, toxic behaviors and unhealthy dynamics can easily find their way even in the most well-intentioned companies and cause strife, disengagement, high turnover, and reputational damage.

Identifying toxic workplace signs is crucial for fostering and promoting a healthy and positive work environment. That’s why we’ve created this toxic workplace checklist for HR managers and leaders to recognize them, take actionable steps, and create a culture where employees thrive.

What is a toxic work environment?

A toxic work environment is one in which culture, interpersonal dynamics, and management practices create and stimulate a stressful, harmful, and unproductive atmosphere.

The consequences of a toxic workplace

A toxic workplace can have negative consequences for the company and employees. Here are the most significant implications for both:

Consequences of a toxic workplace for the company

• Reduced productivity—In a toxic workplace, employees don’t feel motivated and can’t focus. They also lack support, feel stressed out, and have to deal with poor interpersonal relationships, which reduces their productivity and team output.
• Increased employee turnover—Employees feel burnt out in a toxic work environment and dissatisfied until the only solution is to quit. The high employee turnover burdens the remaining employees, who need to carry extra weight now, and the company, which must scramble to replace those who’ve left.
• Increased cost—The decreased performance on the one hand and high turnover and absenteeism on the other increase costs for the company, which now faces extra losses.

• Damage to reputation—Words spread fast, especially bad words. Former employees often share their negative experiences with the employer on various job boards, creating a negative perception of potential talent and customers.
• Higher absenteeism— Employees will find any way to avoid a toxic work environment. They’ll call in sick more often and disengage completely, lowering their performance to an acceptable minimum.. Of course, this impacts the work dynamic and increases the workload for the others.
• Increased recruitment costs—As more people quit toxic workplaces, companies now face extra recruitment costs, including advertising new roles, onboarding, and training new hires.
• Difficulty attracting top talent —What’s even a bigger problem than increased recruitment cost is that potential employees will actively avoid such workplaces. Smart job searchers research more about the company than salaries. They also ask ex-employees about their experiences and will turn away if they discover a toxic work culture.

Consequences of a toxic workplace for employees

• Physical health issues: A toxic work environment often leads to health problems for the employees, such as fatigue, sleep disturbances, headaches, digestive issues, and even increased risk of cardiovascular problems. For instance, job strain, which usually comes in a toxic work environment, is associated with a 23% increase in coronary heart disease and a 30% increase in the risk of stroke.
• Mental health problems: A toxic work environment also negatively affects employees’ mental health and leads to increased anxiety, depression, and burnout. For instance, 57% of workers in toxic workplaces reported this negatively affects their mental health, versus only 18% in healthy work environments.

• Lower morale: Even when it doesn’t lead to physical or mental health problems, constant negativity, lack of support, and poor relationships can still pile up and cause low morale at work.
• Career stagnation: Favoritism, nepotism, and cronyism are how it’s done in a toxic work environment, and you can practically forget about career progression and growth and development opportunities. For instance, ⅓ of young Americans work in the same company as their parent, and they earn almost 20% more than others.

• Lower performance: Employees’ performance naturally drops as they’re stressed and feel disengaged and unmotivated to work. For instance, if the owner cuts employees’ days off because they “missed a quota for that month, they’ll do even less next month. Studies show that while they might lead to immediate corrective actions, penalties undermine motivation and performance in the long run.
• Decreased job satisfaction: You won’t hear anyone say, “I’m happy to work in a toxic workplace.” Instead, people feel unfulfilled and unsatisfied, and their job satisfaction levels are (almost) non-existent.
• Poor relationships: Employees don’t just hate the toxic work environment. Soon, they begin to hate each other—their colleagues, managers, different teams, etc. Everybody becomes an enemy, nobody trusts each other, and unhealthy competition is the norm. Soon, everyone points fingers at each other and gossips behind the back.

Toxic workplace checklist

A toxic workplace environment can manifest itself in several ways. Here are 17 red flags to recognize a toxic workplace:

1. High employee turnover

High turnover rates indicate that things are not going well in the company and could indicate a toxic work environment.

For instance, a high turnover rate is especially prevalent in the restaurant industry, where the average tenure is just 110 days due to low pay, lack of benefits, poor communication, lack of recognition, and no promotion opportunities.

2. Poor communication

Toxic workplaces are commonly characterized by poor communication between employees and managers or employees themselves. This leads to confusion, misunderstanding and frustration, rumors, gossiping, stress, and employee anxiety.

One of the biggest challenges remote and hybrid workers face is the need for better communication from their employers or managers. This leads to less employee engagement and a lack of sense of belonging in the workplace. 

3. Harassment and bullying

Workplace harassment is any unwelcome behavior towards others based on race, sex, color, religion, ethnicity, age, or disability. On the other hand, bullying is the behavior in which one person offends, belittles, degrades, or humiliates a worker or co-worker, often in front of others.

As many as 32% of Americans reported direct bullying at work, and 14% more witnessed it. Overall, men are bigger bullies than women (71% vs 29%), yet women are slightly more often victims (51%). 

4. Favoritism and cliques

Another sign of a toxic work environment is the presence of favoritism, nepotism, cronyism, and cliques in general. These are all examples of favoritism towards one person or group over others based on their family or friendship ties with managers or leaders.

5. Micromanagement

Micromanagement is a philosophy of management where the manager takes extreme control over the employees’ responsibilities and tasks, including minor details.

This can have adverse physical, psychological, and social effects on employees.

6. Unfair compensation

Fair compensation is the bare minimum employees expect from an employer. Feeling underpaid is a common reason for feeling undervalued and unsatisfied at the job. 

In a small survey, 62.3% of 53 respondents felt fairly paid, but 37.7% felt undervalued. That feeling was more prevalent among female respondents and BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) than among men and white people.

7. Lack of recognition

People are not motivated solely by getting a salary but also by words like “thank you” and “good job.” If that’s missing, they start feeling disappointed and less motivated to work, which leads to poor performance.

Unfortunately, recognition is often done ad-hoc, and managers often need to recognize some employees while they do others because of the lack of clear rules and policies.

8. Unfair policies

Policies in the workplace exist for a reason. For example, a company should have an anti-harassment and discrimination policy, an equal employment opportunity policy, or a data breach event policy.

However, these policies must be equally fair to all employees. For instance, if you have a dress code, you can’t demand women wear high heels at work while men wear flip-flops.

9. Frequent absenteeism

If one of the most common questions at the start of a work week is, “Where is X? Why didn’t they come to work?” this is a good sign of a toxic workplace. 

It’s estimated that absenteeism costs companies between $427.5 and 578.8 billion per year. This is because companies have more recruitment, training, and onboarding costs now and must spend more on overtime for other employees to cover.

10. Gossiping and negative office politics

“Did you hear X and Y got together?” “I saw X drunk yesterday” (no, they didn’t). Office gossip is a slippery slope, and it’s easy to get from innocuous talk to being the target of unfiltered gossiping.

Office politics are the same. Showing up to work on time is good office politics, and so is saying hi to everyone. However, office politics like hoarding information, exclusion, backstabbing, etc, are harmful and a sign of a toxic workplace.

11. Poor workload management

Workload often increases in a toxic workplace due to increased turnover and absenteeism. Still, it can often increase even before that due to favoritism, where the manager gives more manageable tasks to someone they like and more challenging tasks to those they don’t.

12. Lack of feedback

Whether it’s a lack of feedback or not listening to one, without it, employees are not only completely in the dark about their performance but also don’t feel anyone is listening and valuing their opinions. 

This leads to less motivation at work, fewer ideas and innovation, and stagnation.

13. Poor work-life balance

Employees have a personal life outside work, including family, friends, etc. Unfortunately, many employers think that if work is more important than personal life, this should also be for their workers.

For example, Elon Musk once famously emailed Twitter (now X) employees at 2 AM, demanding of them “long hours at high intensity.” As a result, Musk’s management style led to hundreds of employees voluntarily quitting (in addition to himself laying off around 80% of the workforce)

14. Toxic leadership

Toxic leadership is a style of leadership that involves self-centered attitudes, behavior, and motivation that negatively affects employees and subordinates and organizational performance as a whole. Some common signs of toxic leaders are the abuse of power, micromanagement, lack of empathy, favoritism, and resistance to feedback.

15. Fear of retaliation

Another sign that something is not right at the workplace and that it might be toxic is that employees are reluctant to voice their concerns or report for fear of retaliation against them.

For example, employees might keep quiet about the manager’s misconduct or abusive behavior as they fear this might put them in a bad spot. Some signs of this include unfair disciplinary actions, being ostracized, or getting poor performance reviews.

16. Lack of career development

A toxic work environment often means a lack of growth and career opportunities. Usually, this doesn’t affect all employees, but only those who are not favorites with the boss or manager.

17. Lack of clear objectives and goals

Clear objectives and goals are essential for the team and organization to move forward and in the right direction. However, when these are not as clear, employees become directionless.

This also leads to lower productivity, lower motivation, and less focus. Accountability also needs to improve. Team members collaborate less, and leaders make bad decisions.

Steps to take when dealing with a toxic workplace

Spotting signs of toxic work culture is important, but what should you do next? It’s important to take steps like these to deal with this problem:

1. Encourage open communication

Things like bullying and harassment usually happen when no one is speaking out and everyone “minds their own business.” 

Replace gossip with open communication, where everyone can safely voice concerns: 

• Encourage employees to report incidents by actually taking action to inspect and sanction the bullies.

• Open anonymous channels that’ll erase any barriers in communications 
• Share feedback on feedback, and keep communication flowing in both ways. 

2. Promote a culture of transparency

Open communication and workplace transparency go hand-in-hand. As a leader, you should avoid keeping employees in the dark and instead share how decisions are made. 

For example, involve them in discussions about day-to-day operations, efficiency, organizational matters, etc. They spend most of their work time applying those processes, and they know best where the flaws are. 

If there’s not a slight portion of employees openly disagreeing with your decisions and communicating their concerns – be sure there’s no transparency nor open communication within the organization.

3. Ask and listen to feedback

Speaking of opinions, you should also promote a feedback-welcome culture in your organization. Regularly ask for feedback from employees and listen and act on it. For instance, if they report feeling overworked, see how you can better manage their workload.

For example, NLB Komercijalna Banka aimed to strengthen the company culture within its newly merged organization. Its focus was on building a unique culture based on open communication and feedback. 

After a year of using HeartCount as a tool to improve employee experience, the bank has built a transparent culture based on feedback, with an employee participation rate of over 57%.

With HeartCount, you can collect feedback through regular automated pulse checks or design custom surveys tailored to your specific business needs. 

4. Delegate

This one is critical if you have micromanagers in your organization. Explain that you need them for higher-level responsibilities while they can delegate tasks to others.

For example, train multiple team members to handle critical tasks. This way, you won’t find yourself in trouble if only one person is familiar with the process and they’re not around.

5. Establish and follow clear policies

Ensure you have a zero-tolerance anti-discrimination policy and an anti-bullying and harassment policy.

Communicate these policies, review them often, and follow them strictly.

6. Enforce accountability for all

Hold aggressors, bullies, and discriminators accountable for their actions according to your policies and make sure they face disciplinary action. This goes for everyone regardless of their position in the company or if they’re someone’s cousin or friend.

7. Investigate complaints immediately

Treat any complaint of bullying, harassment, or discrimination 100% seriously. Thoroughly investigate every case, but maintain confidentiality for both the victim and the perpetrator.

8. Create awareness and educate

Ensure everyone (leaders and employees) knows the signs and consequences of toxic work culture and behavior in others and themselves.

9. Offer leadership training

Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean being better at your job than others. It’s more about having emotional intelligence and being a good communicator.

Without these traits, you can’t be a good leader. Fortunately, these are skills that you can train and develop.

10. Use recognition programs

Stop doing employee recognition ad-hoc. Instead, use a recognition program template that includes raises, bonuses, non-monetary incentives, etc. Promote peer-to-peer manager-to-employee recognition and make sure the rules are the same for everyone.

With HeartCount’s recognition platform, you can easily enable employees to send and receive kudos that are visible to everyone in the company. 

11. Create career opportunities

Encourage and help employees to seek out growth and development opportunities. Aid them in making the next step in their career, and don’t hold them back.

12. Set clear workload expectations

Communicate goals and objectives for every project and task clearly. If there are no clear expectations on who should do what and why, everyone will start doing things their way, and that’s not a good idea.

13. Offer flexible work options

Promote work-life balance by offering flexible work options. Allow employees to have as much autonomy over their time and schedule as possible.

Taking steps toward a healthier workplace

A toxic work environment doesn’t happen overnight, just as a healthy culture of collaboration cannot be built in a day. 

Spot on early warning signs, act on them, keep consistency and communicate actively and transparently within the organization. If you promote those thriving on backstabbing, share crucial information when there are already a thousand variations on what happened, etc,  counting on loyalty shouldn’t be your strongest point. 

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