A toxic culture rarely announces itself. It takes hold quietly, when the informal rules — what people actually see rewarded and tolerated — start overriding the values on the wall.
It matters enormously. Research from MIT Sloan (Sull, Sull and Zweig, 2022) found that a toxic culture was more than ten times more powerful than pay in predicting whether people left their employers. The researchers identified five elements of toxicity: cultures that are disrespectful, non-inclusive, unethical, cut-throat and abusive.
Nine warning signs
- Regretted departures cluster in certain teams. Turnover isn't spread evenly — it concentrates around particular managers.
- Survey response rates are falling. People stop answering when they no longer believe answers lead anywhere — or feel it's unsafe to give them.
- One-to-ones are cancelled or one-way. Meetings get moved, shortened or turned into status updates.
- Recognition stays inside an in-group. The same few people praise and are praised.
- Colleagues are slow to help each other. Requests for help or feedback go unanswered.
- Public criticism, no private repair. People are called out in front of others, and nobody follows up to put it right.
- Fear language creeps into retrospectives. "Covering ourselves", "not my call", "better not raise it".
- HR complaints look abnormal — in either direction. A spike is a warning; so is total silence.
- "That's just how they are" about a leader. When bad behaviour by a senior person is explained away, everyone learns the real rules.
Where to start
Diagnose team by team — toxicity is usually local before it's general. Then:
- Address senior leaders' behaviour first. Nothing else is credible until this happens.
- Restore weekly, two-way one-to-ones.
- Hold private repair conversations after public criticism.
- Reset psychological safety with affected teams.
- Broaden recognition beyond the in-group.
- Re-measure and communicate progress after around 90 days.
What tends not to work as the main response: all-hands speeches, generic mandatory training, or relying on anonymous hotlines alone.
Try the rituals: Culture Warning-Sign Review · The Unsaid Question · Blameless Retrospective
Adapted from writing by Tareef Jafferi at Happily.ai, a Rituals of Work partner. Some figures in the original came without sources and have been left out here.
