Have you been allowing a toxic workplace culture to simmer under the surface of your company? It’s more common than you think. It’s also incredibly difficult for most managers and leaders to know when workplace culture has turned toxic. However, there are signs. After decades of recording data with thousands of teams, Teamalytics has developed a way to actually measure the health of your team culture. How leaders and team members score with 13 specific behaviors can let you know exactly where your company culture stands.

You might think that you have toxicity covered if you’ve performed surveys in the past. The problem is that surveys and other DIY measurements for employee satisfaction can be biased. They also don’t take into account the full spectrum of what makes teams perform optimally. That means that you’re stuck with little more than a glorified personality test for each team member. Ultimately, most resources out there aren’t created by experts who know what makes teams tick. That means that a toxic culture may already be bubbling up in your organization. Let’s look at the telltale signs of toxic corporate culture.

Signs That Workplace Culture Is Toxic: What Every Manager Needs to Know

Detecting a toxic culture doesn’t necessarily come down to identifying specific scenarios. It comes down to analyzing the dynamics taking place to see how different workplace styles and attitudes are interacting. By analyzing your team culture using specific categories, you’ll be able to identify if you have a productive or toxic culture. First, let’s cover some outward signs that point to toxicity within a team:

• Goals aren’t being met.
• Low morale.
• Lack of recognition for high performers.
• Lack of transparency.
• High turnover.

Ideally, you’ll implement a performance measurement that can detect toxicity before these symptoms begin to erode your company culture to the point that you’re losing talent, missing opportunities, and sullying your name in your industry. However, it’s not too late to use an analysis of team dynamics to begin reversing a toxic workplace environment if you missed the early signs.

In 2024, Teamalytics published a first-of-its-kind e-book designed specifically to address toxic or underperforming workplace cultures in the new work-from-home economy. Nestled within the e-book are results from an exclusive Teamalytics review of 1,484 team assessments using the firm’s Teamalytics 360 Profile that measures 13 critical leadership behaviors. Unlike mainstream workplace surveys that simply look at “good” or “bad” traits without understanding the spectrum of usefulness, this analysis graphs each of the 13 characteristics as a strength or weakness based on whether it’s being overused or underused. Here’s a quick glance at the findings:

• 79% of teams exhibit low need for change.
• 62% of teams exhibit low urgency and intensity.
• 57% of teams exhibit low criticality.
• 48% of teams exhibit low need to nurture.
• 20% of teams exhibit deference issues.

If your company is operating like most companies today, there’s a good chance that your breakdown would look a lot like this. If rehabilitating your company culture is a part of your big rebrand for success, Teamalytics is here to help you utilize your talent to its highest potential in what can feel like a disjointed work-from-home culture. It all starts when you read our exclusive e-book for team leaders looking to avert a company culture and branding crisis!

When you download the new e-book from Teamalytics, you’ll learn why these findings matter so much for your company’s culture. Based on employees scoring either too high or too low, you can determine weak points in your company culture. However, that’s not all there is to gain from this must-read resource. “Creating Cutting Edge Company Culture in a Work From Home World” also covers two key resources to an engaged workforce and how to tap into the link between results and relationships. Download your copy today!