Why Hybrid Work Can Become Toxic
By Mark Mortensen
Toxicity at work — no matter where or how we do our jobs — is caused by a range of factors. It is important to recognize that some aspects of hybrid and remote work make toxicity more likely to occur.
First, though, let’s quickly outline what “toxic” actually means. It doesn’t refer to the misunderstandings, tensions, and conflicts that are a natural (and needed) part of any healthy organization. Nor does it refer to a one-off incident or a coworker who is a jerk every now and again. These kinds of irritations, for the most part, are best thought of as normal parts of (working) life.
So, what actually is considered toxic? A study by Donald Sull and his colleagues identified five attributes of a toxic culture: disrespectful, noninclusive, unethical, cutthroat, and abusive. In a recent discussion I had with two colleagues who are experts on the subject, Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School and Constance Hadley of the Questrom School of Business, we agreed that toxicity also implies the behavior in question is both pervasive and ongoing. And that, we believe, is what makes bad behavior rise — or perhaps fall — to the level of toxic. Toxicity carries a sense of inescapability, which is part of what makes it so painful to experience at work.
Undeniably negative as these attributes are, there is no absolute, uniformly accepted scale against which we can measure any of them — all five are subjective, anchored in each person’s experience. Making matters more complicated, a hybrid environment by definition means that employees are experiencing their work in very different contexts — some face-to-face, others remote — and those may vary by the day. As a result, hybrid workspaces aren’t uniform; some people may experience a hybrid environment as toxic while others do not. That does not make a toxic hybrid environment any less painful or damaging to those who experience it as such. However, it does mean that some behaviors may be toxic even as a result of well-meaning — or at least not ill-meaning — actions.
