Cultural Excellence and Employee Wellbeing are comparable to the two sides of a coin.
Mental health is not just a prevalent aspect of workplace discussions. Depression, anxiety, stress, and workplace bullying are a global healthcare challenge, a scourge afflicting people everywhere who, sadly, consider the conditions a taboo that can jeopardize their reputation, professional career, and relationships. Other causal factors are exclusion from the decision-making process, poor communication, task-oriented management practices, lack of team cohesion, and inflexible work schedules. Sadly, senior managers consider employees’ financial, relationship, and family problems as private matters that shouldn’t interfere with organizational activities and performance. This is absurd, inhumane, and morally wrong in a world where business ethics and social sustainability are widely considered an effective global management strategy.
Workplace culture versus employee wellbeing
Workplace bullying is a common occurrence where senior managers have implicit support from top management executives who condone abusive and aggressive behaviour. Over time, more employees embrace poor ethics, moral injury, and violence as a norm because they often see colleagues get away with it. Workplace violence doesn’t only affect subordinates; senior managers also experience bullying, and the ripple effect creates widespread aggression and conflicts. This eventually triggers hate, mistrust, and resistance to change.
The mental, emotional, and psychological impact of a weak corporate culture is immeasurable. It doesn’t only reflect on employee motivation, engagement, and organizational performance; some affected individuals are resorting to self-harm, drug abuse, violence, and suicide as solutions to work-related stress. Fatal workplace shootings in the U.S. between 1982 to January 2023 is partially attributed to workplace bullying although violence does not justify the negative health effects of toxic organizational cultures. Culture in this context means the psychological predisposition that controls people’s perception and behaviour in corporate settings.
Which way forward?
There is urgent need for organizations to implement employee-centred plans that promote wellbeing. Unfortunately, mental health challenges cannot be seen although it’s everywhere around us, and studies indicate that one out of five U.S. workers has some form of mental health disorder. So, anyone who knows someone facing mental health challenges should intervene whenever they notice signs of distress that can escalate workplace disputes and disagreements to violent behaviours.
The culture dilemma
In a world where mental health issues have become a key challenge to employee engagement, organizations need cultures that make employees feel respected, supported, and satisfied with their jobs. It is unacceptable for anyone to be harsh, hostile, or aggressive to others no matter the circumstance. But when bosses turn to workplace bullies, they create a toxic culture where anxiety, stress and low self-esteem become an identity that eventually results in high turnover. Further, workplace diversity is a complex issue in multicultural organizations. Due to cultural multiplicity and the often-contradictory beliefs that create conflicts, leaders must embrace fairness and equity.
Former U.S. president Barack Obama recently expressed concern about ‘cancel culture,’ a common phrase among young people that promotes the disposition to call out people whose action is considered anti-social, unethical, or irresponsible. In professional circles, cancel culture involves the act of ignoring, excluding, or disassociating with the person or group in person, online or on social media—without necessarily using violence. Perhaps, people think that passing judgment on others via tweets or hashtags is the only way to change the world. But they’re wrong. Although cancel culture also targets injustice, discrimination, inequality, and racism, it distils political discourse thereby causing social inactivity, intolerance, and cyberbullying, a reason why Obama’s comments stirred controversies among human rights activists. The problem is that people use cancel culture to alienate rather than promote good behaviours. Therefore, the question is about what organizations are doing to address the mental, emotional, and psychological impact of toxic culture?
Key takeaways
Strategic management solutions capable of helping leaders to enforce engagement as their organizations transit to new realities in remote and hybrid work include:
- Improving work/life balance and employee welfare packages.
- Establishing responsive leader-member communication channels that strengthen information sharing, trust, collaboration, and organizational resilience.
- Implementing employee-centred policies that encourage responsibility, flexibility, innovation, and anonymous reporting through robust internal or external procedures.
- Lending support to values that meet global standards for respect, integrity, and diversity.
