5 Things That Exist in a Workplace with Bad Culture

While there are seemingly a magnitude of reasons why a workplace would be considered a less than attractive place to work, there are 5 things that are proven to be the most common and most powerful factors at play.

It should come as no surprise that the environment we work in can have a tremendous impact on our mental health. In Dr Stephen Stansfeld and Bridget Candy's 2006 meta-analysis, they found that it can even cause clinical depression.

Do any or all of these exist in your workplace?

1. Job Strain

In Nir Eyal's book, Indistractable, he references the research by Stansfeld and Candy and explains job strain is "found in environments where employees were expected to meet high expectations, yet lacked the ability to control the outcomes".

"Stansfeld likens the feeling to working on a factory production line without a way to adjust the pace of production, even when things go wrong. Office workers can experience job strain from emails or assignments rushing by like unwrapped chocolates zooming along a conveyor belt".

2. "Effort-Reward Imbalance"

Where you don't see a return for the hard work you put in, whether that be by way of pay rises or appreciation from your team or boss.

According to the research undertaken by Stansfeld and Candy, the underlying issue of "job strain" and "effort-reward imbalance", actually boils down to our next point...

3. Lack of Control (or No Control)

The underlying cause of distress, depression and poor work culture boils down to this:

When you take high expectations and don't give employees control over they way things are handled, you have a breeding ground for a poor workplace culture.

An exert from Indistractable

Not allowing your employees to have any say in the way they work, particularly when the expectations are so high, can cause distress and mental health issues. This is only compounded again if the "effort-reward imbalance" is also at play.

4. "Technology & The Pressure to Always Be On"

The expectation that you are always available. You always check and respond to emails, even when out with friends or family and are expected to cancel plans to work when required.

Technology that encourages this "always on" behaviour and creates an office norm of immediate responses, action and availability at all hours.

The technology itself isn't the issue but when combined with all our earlier points, it creates a poor workplace culture.

This increased accessibility to employees comes at a very high price to their mental health. It's important that employees have time to completely switch off from work not just for their mental health, but a well-rested team is a far more productive one.

Feeling uncomfortable saying no to working on the weekend or late in the evening leads us to our final point...

5. NO "Psychological Safety"

Lucky last and most important.

In 2015 Google set out to find out what made a perfect team, so they got a whole bunch of researchers on board and discovered that it didn't matter who was in the team or how smart they were collectively. There was some far more important than that:

"Psychological safety" is a phrase coined by Dr Amy Edmondson in her research from back in 1999. Edmondson defines it as "a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions or concerns, or mistakes".

Does your current workplace exhibit any or all of these factors?

How do you think they could be improved to create a healthier and happier work environment?

I would love to hear from you!

Annemarie White