Toxic work culture

 

Toxic work culture

Literature on people/ human resource management is full of platitudes. It is also very upbeat and positive, overly so. My own experience about people management is that it is very demanding work and one has to be truthful and honest while dealing with others, no matter what the short run compulsions are. I also found that it is better to restrict one’s interactions to a small group.

On the backdrop of a lot of motivational goodness in the literature, a recent article about toxicity at the workplace caught my eye. (The Times of India, Pune, 1 Feb 23: ‘Productivity got boost from WFH, but toxicity grew too’ by Sujaya Banerjee)

The article states that toxic work cultures are disrespectful, abusive, unethical, non-inclusive and very competitive. Their features are:

·       Lack of freedom to speak up, to experiment

·       Poor communication in the organization

·       Micromanagement by seniors

·       Lack of trust and

·       Poor experience at the workplace.

It was a short article but it caught my eye. It resonated with my experience absolutely.

My own work experience is pretty limited. I began my career in a large, professional manufacturing organization when I was singularly ill equipped to work. Instead of acting on this realization and quitting quickly, I hung on for three and a half years. Then I was in a semi-government organization for donkey’s years. It is the latter that I am talking about.

I taught in a college, funded by the state government but run by a private trust whose life members constituted the management. The college had a nice, compact campus at a very good location and its staff and students were cosmopolitan. A number of institutions ran their show in the campus and my college was the newest member.

I had to spend a lot of time to get tenure in the college. By then drift had set in. Students stopped taking the examinations seriously and they also stopped attending lectures which were pretty boring. The subjects of Commerce were also very boring and were taught mechanically, without any explanation of their background and forward, sideways linkages.

Students’ absence was something nobody talked about. Instead, ostrich-like, the faculty looked inward and concentrated on backbiting and watching each other’s moves for career progression. Progress was never defined in academic terms. It was only administrative i.e., taking over office work, examination work and finally becoming Principal.

Due to government regulations and reservation rules, the faculty got divided into 2 groups, a handful of tenured teachers, surrounded by a large group of temporary teachers, part-timers, leave vacancy teachers etc. The latter were made to slog in the hope of getting tenure but just a few could manage to. Because there was no accountability to students, permanent faculty had plenty of time on hand and it resorted to groupism. Reserved versus general category teachers was the basic divide to which were added more angles of subjects, departments, facility with languages, general outlook etc. etc.

The salary scale was meagre but it was periodically revised as per successive pay commission rules and the positions were pensionable. So there was plenty going for these tenured jobs. There were few separations. People dug their heels in and tried to sabotage working from within. As the first principal of the college retired, there was dilution in the effective power in the hands of subsequent principals.

I only concentrated on teaching and I was attracted to research. It did not take long for the established group to keep me at an arm’s length because my motives were not understood. Each of the features of toxicity mentioned above was experienced by me. I felt suffocated, alienated in the college. I found the culture non-inclusive, closed and discriminatory.

My part-time post-doctoral research fellowship was the last straw for the in-group and because of it, I was made to feel like a pariah. I retaliated by totally ignoring the group. I got isolated but I did not mind. I concentrated on my own work. There was another, younger teacher who excelled in teaching. He too, quit in sheer disgust.

In the college, I could work on my own. In corporate jobs, people cannot and they cannot afford to be shunted. So, they take to copying their seniors and that makes the workplace even more toxic.

Given the highly competitive nature of corporate workplaces and given human psychology (highly educated, experienced persons can also be very mean!), inclusion of these negative but crucial aspects of working, will make human resource management literature more realistic.