Toxic Work Environments Affect Productivity

Are you happy at work? Are there toxic people at work? How is your productivity? Negative or toxic work environments affect productivity.

Let’s be honest. When work environments or cultures are positive, work is great. Sure there might be stressful situations but it will be somewhat manageable because people are working together. Then someone starts doing something questionable or being negative.

That negativity breeds a toxic work environment very quickly. A negative influence is four times more powerful than a positive person. That is why you need to surround yourself with positive people.

This toxic environment makes it very difficult to stay productive at work. Why is that?

Toxic Work Environments Affect Productivity

Being actively engaged in the work you do, drives high productivity for any employee. They want to do great. They strive to learn and are focused on their goals. Engaged workers will more likely work well within a team and are a project manager’s dream team member!

However, according to an article by Growth Everywhere, 63 percent of employees are not engaged at work and 24 percent of workers are actively disengaged.

Actively disengaged…are these the ones that have given up and just “act” busy but don’t do anything?

This leaves only 13 percent of the working population in the world engaged in what they do for a living. Why is that?

The article sites happiness as the source for lack of engagement, but let’s look deeper. Let’s open up about negativity in the workplace and toxic work environments.

Have you ever worked with someone that fed off of other people’s mistakes? Or was deciding to not do their work but blamed others for it not getting done? How about working with a workplace bully?

It all adds up to a toxic work environment and has the power to turn the most highly engaged employee into an employee that is disengaged and struggling with their productivity.

The problem grows when you have people that are sensitive to negative influences working alongside those negative people. They start to act poorly and will add to the toxic environment, creating a worse situation.

How to Improve Productivity in a Toxic Work Environment

Managers Dealing with Toxic Employees:

If you are a manager trying to sort through the chaos rapidly growing within your team. Take a deep breath and try to figure out the source of the toxicity and why it happened. Is it just the person’s nature, or did something happen that was an extreme case? Either way, an investigation is necessary then action needs to be taken to either turn the negativity around or cut it out completely.

The sooner, the better.

Leaving the situation alone doesn’t fix it. Good people will leave or business profits will drop, or both. Turning a blind eye to the toxic environment doesn’t help the business, it hurts it.

Employees and Managers Dealing with a Toxic Environment:

If you are an employee that is miserable because of the toxic work environment you have a few options. I recommend the following actions to try and keep your sanity (it’s helped me on many occasions):

Limit your interactions with negative people as much as possible.
Stick to the facts in a situation, staying away from their “impressions” of what is happening.
Don’t engage in office gossip.
On your break, read or listen to something positive. Even a fun book to whisk you away into another world for a little while will help clear that mindset.
Find someone with the power to fix the situation, before it becomes worse. Chances are if your productivity is affected, others will be having the same issue.

When the mind is consumed with negative influences or people being negative within the workplace your mind is cluttered with trying to either avoid the situation or figuring out what to do to fix it. I recommend to my clients to rise above, walk away, try their best to stay on task, and get help when needed. If they can’t find a way to get help with the situation then they may need to find another job. That should only be the last option and only if your health is affected and management or HR isn’t able to turn the work environment around.

The bottom line: Toxic work environments affect productivity and your health. The only way to improve your productivity in a toxic work environment is to create healthy habits to overcome negative influences and seek help to change the situation.