When Sara Fung was hired as a clinical nurse specialist at a hospital near Toronto, she thought she was starting her dream job. Six months in, she was miserable. Every day felt like an episode of Survivor. “I had to find the right alliances,” she says, “or I was going to sink.”
A manager Fung worked with was a bully, and the environment was generally hostile. During daily huddles with staff, the manager would reject most of her suggestions and discourage her from asking questions, and would sometimes call meetings intentionally excluding her. Fung recalls meetings in which physicians yelled at one another across the table, to the point that the administrative assistant didn’t know what to record in the minutes. The doctors rarely gave Fung a chance to speak and disregarded her expertise. It happened to others too. “A lot of high-performing individuals got stepped on,” says Fung. “They either stayed and kept their heads down, or left.”
Fung didn’t think complaints to the human resources department would go anywhere. At home, she would snap at her husband, her children, and her mother. She had trouble sleeping. To cope, she gossiped with the few co-workers she trusted. She eventually quit, moving on to another job that in many ways was just as demoralizing, where a manager would regularly give her specific instructions only to question her when she carried them out. Fung describes another director she worked under as a “toxic rock star”: someone who gets results but at the expense of the team’s well-being. Fung noticed that newcomers like her would start out with enthusiasm and a desire to improve things, but few lasted.
She has since built a business helping nurses grow their careers. She and a former co-worker host a podcast on health care; in certain episodes, they reflect on some of their worst experiences in nursing.
Some might counter that what Fung dealt with is typical of a high-stress environment, where tension among colleagues is expected. Those who can’t manage difficult co-workers or live up to their bosses’ standards are simply not cut out for their jobs. Maybe that’s true. Maybe we expect too much from our jobs. We don’t have to like our colleagues. Our bosses owe us nothing more than a paycheque.
Or maybe we shouldn’t accept misery at work as being normal.
Searches for the term “toxic workplace,” per Google Trends, have risen steadily over the past two decades. That lines up with increasingly publicized scandals involving high-profile figures. Then governor general Julie Payette resigned after a 2020 CBC report, and a subsequent independent review, found that she and her second-in-command had bullied and harassed staff by screaming at, belittling, and publicly humiliating them. In the past three years, allegations and complaints have abounded in TV and media, including at The Ellen DeGeneres Show (sexual harassment and racial discrimination), comedian Hasan Minhaj’s now-cancelled show Patriot Act (women of colour reported they’d been mistreated), the food magazine Bon Appétit (racism), the podcast Reply All (also racism—which came to light as its reporters investigated Bon Appétit), Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show (culture of intimidation), and Fox News and Tucker Carlson’s show (sexist and antisemitic work environment). Last year, Mike Babcock, who once coached the Toronto Maple Leafs, was fired from his latest gig following an NHL Players’ Association investigation into reports that he bullied players—for instance, by demanding to go through their phones.
Then there are the less star-studded but equally alarming allegations of toxic workplaces. To name a few: Exxon’s offices in Texas, the video gaming company Ubisoft, the United Nations World Food Programme—one of the world’s biggest humanitarian organizations—and several municipal governments in Canada, including Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Montreal.
News reports tend to treat each case as a one-off, but there are some clear patterns. In several instances, employees allege that complaints to HR departments are either ignored, dismissed, or quashed—or spark retaliation. Problematic supervisors or co-workers are excused for their misbehaviours, especially if they’re men. (Anyone who’s heard something along the lines of “That’s just the way he is” about a colleague often enough will likely start believing and even repeating it.) Felicia Enuha, in an episode of her career management podcast Trill MBA, describes a toxic workplace as one that “allows the bad behaviour of one or a few to continue.” But what that looks like is subjective. Ashley McCulloch’s 2016 doctoral dissertation for Carleton University, one of the few studies that examine the psychological considerations of toxic work environments, draws parallels with the science of toxicology. A chemical can be harmless at low doses but becomes poisonous past a certain threshold. So it is with toxic behaviour at work.
By some measures, that poison is widespread. A 2020/21 survey, jointly conducted by researchers at Western University and the University of Toronto, found that 71.4 percent of respondents had experienced a form of workplace harassment or violence in the previous two years. In some cases, remote work models during the COVID-19 pandemic introduced new barriers to reporting harassment and prevented workers from accessing adequate support. The phenomenon isn’t limited to Canada: a 2021 survey by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO), Lloyd’s Register Foundation, and Gallup found that nearly one in five people worldwide experience psychological violence and harassment in their working lives. According to the report, many of those who faced discrimination because of factors like gender, disability status, or skin colour were more likely to have also experienced workplace harassment or violence.
“Within a capitalist system, the dynamic of worker and boss is already set up to be toxic.”
It’s not clear whether toxic behaviour is on the rise or if increasingly open discussions about mental health, sexual harassment, and racism, among other forms of discrimination, are shining a light on some fundamental flaws in the way we work. One could argue, for example, that professional hierarchies—often built on the conceit that promotions and advancements are merit based—provide a convenient facade for some of humanity’s worst impulses. Favouritism and nepotism can reward the undeserving, and discriminatory attitudes among those in power can hold back genuine hard work and talent. Inflated egos among some of those who rise through the ranks might drive them to mistreat those below them. There’s even handy business jargon that attempts to justify the inequity—say, for example, the concept of “managing up,” whereby employees are meant to, in essence, babysit incompetent or moody supervisors. “Even if your boss has some serious shortcomings,” one Harvard Business Review article advises, “it’s in your best interest, and it’s your responsibility, to make the relationship work.” (It’s not clear why exactly that burden should fall on subordinates, especially........