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There’s a joke out there that starts out something of the like: “How many psychologists does it take to explain a joke?”
Science has actually taken a run at this — why some find a joke funny and others not so much — and it turns out the answer is many.
However, there is one common denominator on what people find funny, science tells us: everyday life. That’s probably why the sitcom “The Office” — both U.S. and U.K. versions — was such a hit. There’s truth to it.
Charlie Sull uses the TV show as an analogy to describe toxic corporate cultures that have employees running for the exits.
“Yet in real life, every day, millions of U.S. employees do work in a culture as toxic as this U.K. sitcom and its later U.S. version portrayed. Perhaps this explains the show’s enduring appeal. On average, 1.3% of American employees at large companies explicitly describe their company’s culture as toxic or poisonous, according to Glassdoor, a website where employees rate their workplace. More than 10% of employees do not use this exact language, but do cite an indicator of toxicity including unethical behavior, abusive management or racial inequity in their Glassdoor review.
“These are employees from large, well-known companies. If I were to scroll down my list of the most toxic large employers in America — organizations where more than 20% of employees negatively cite toxicity in their Glassdoor review — you would recognize most of them as household names. Toxicity is hiding in plain sight.”
This, Sull says, is the reason for the Great Resignation, citing his team’s research at MIT and the analysis of more than one million Glassdoor reviews about the largest employers in the U.S. The clear culprit, he says, is toxic culture.
Sull’s group analyzed more than one million Glassdoor reviews about the largest U.S. employers.
“We found that toxic culture was more than 10 times as powerful of a driver of attrition as compensation.”
When thinking about toxic culture, business leaders should ask four questions.
1. How toxic is my culture, relative to peers? In any large organization, at least a few employees will inevitably say the culture is toxic. Even in the saintly St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the healthiest organizational cultures in America, 0.2% of employees on Glassdoor explicitly say the culture is toxic. The real question is how many employees feel this way, relative to an appropriate benchmark set.
2. Where are the microcultures of toxicity in my organization? The research at MIT indicates that toxicity is rarely evenly distributed throughout an organization. Rather, it lives in discrete microcultures of elevated toxicity within a structure. Accurately identifying these microcultures is crucial for addressing this issue.
3. How does toxicity live in these microcultures? Toxic cultures can take different forms, even within the same organization, and the interventions will vary accordingly. A microculture facing issues with an abusive boss will require a different intervention than one facing issues with favoritism, for instance.
4. Who are my toxic leaders? Toxic leaders have a negative and disproportionate effect on the culture. Identifying who your toxic leaders are and addressing that behavior is critical to building a less toxic culture.
Read the entire thought piece here.