(inc.com)
Let’s first flashback to 2021, when an unprecedented surge in employees leaving their jobs—over 24 million Americans alone between April and September —occurred. This phenomenon, known as the Great Resignation, left business leaders grappling to understand the underlying reasons behind this mass exodus.
Despite much media attention focusing on employee dissatisfaction with wages, one analysis of 34 million online employee profiles ranked compensation 16th among all factors in predicting turnover.
The reality? According to the same study, toxic work culture was found to be 10.4 times greater than compensation in predicting a company’s attrition rate relative to its industry average. The crucial takeaway is that workplace toxicity is the primary factor driving employees to leave during the Great Resignation.
Things have not changed.
A recent Monster survey found that 80 percent of workers saw their workplaces as toxic in 2025, up from 67 percent in 2024. An eye-opening 71 percent of employees reported their mental health as poor (40 percent) or fair (31 percent). Workers identified a toxic workplace culture as the leading cause of poor mental health (59 percent), closely followed by bad management (54 percent).
Employment platform iHire surveyed 1,781 workers and 504 employers across 57 industries in the United States in December 2024. According to iHire’s first-ever Toxic Workplace Trends Report, nearly 75 percent of the employees surveyed said they had worked for an employer with a toxic workplace.
When asked what made a workplace toxic, the top response of those who had experienced a toxic work environment was poor leadership or management, as 78.7 percent of employees reported unethical, unaccountable, or unsupportive company leaders.
The other top responses included poor communication (69.8 percent), unfair employee treatment (67.5 percent), and high stress or burnout (65.1 percent).
The manager’s role
Toxic work cultures don’t happen overnight. They develop because of various factors and dynamics within an organization. Clearly, the best explanation for this is poor management.
When managers lack empathy, fail to communicate clearly, or prioritize their own interests over their employees’ well-being, it can create a toxic environment.
When managers fail to provide information about decisions, it can create a culture of secrecy, rumors, and mistrust among employees. Encouraging excessive competition without promoting collaboration and teamwork can also create an environment where employees undermine one another, engage in backstabbing behaviors, and prioritize personal success over the success of the organization. And when workplace bullying, harassment, or discrimination are tolerated or ignored by management, employees feel unsafe, undervalued, and unsupported.
The consequences of toxic workplaces
As businesses continue to practice under these conditions, stories will continue to unfold about the damaging effects of uncivil and inhumane work environments on people’s quality of life and health. Toxic workplaces are killing us—literally.
Swedish researchers at the Stress Institute at Stockholm University studied more than 3,100 men over a 10-year period in typical work settings. They found that workers’ risks for angina, heart attack, and death rose for those who worked for toxic bosses. The men in the study, aged 19 to 70, had their hearts checked at work during a period of three years. During the follow-up period, there were 74 cases of fatal and nonfatal heart attacks or angina (chest pains) or death from heart disease. The managers deemed the worst increased their employees’ heart disease risk by 25 percent. And the problems were found to be cumulative: The longer the employees worked for problematic managers in highly stressful conditions, the worse the effects. People who had worked for a poor boss for more than four years had a 64 percent higher risk of heart disease. These negative effects affected everyone, regardless of other risk factors, including how much they smoked or drank and regardless of their social status or income level. The study’s lead scientist said, “For all those who work under managers who they perceive behave strangely, or in any way they don’t understand, and they feel stressed, the study confirms this develops into a health risk.”
A different story we must tell ourselves
We should never take the focus away from the people who do the work. They are the central characters and heroes in this grand storyline that we must remember and cherish.
We must remember to engage in a greater conversation about what it takes to inspire people to do their best work so that companies profit and human lives flourish.
We must remember that humans are inherently relational and seek to experience positive emotions. In the workplace, it’s no different. We long for connection with others as we pursue purposeful work that produces meaningful results with people who respect and dignify us.
Until we abandon systemic managerial thinking and hiring practices that put autocrats, narcissists, and bullies in control, power, and decision-making at the top, we will hold back the workforce—our most valued employees—from reaching their fullest potential and the businesses they work for from financially prospering.