The most effective ways to fix toxic culture involve stopping the reward of bad behaviour, setting clear boundaries for acceptable conduct, and measuring how your team naturally prefers to work.
A healthy workplace environment requires constant maintenance. When bad habits take root, they can quickly spread through an entire department. Addressing these issues early prevents good staff from leaving and helps restore a productive atmosphere.
Key takeaways
- Toxicity usually stems from a mismatch between what leadership says and what they actually reward.
- High performers who destroy team morale cost the business more than they bring in.
- Understanding individual work personalities helps resolve chronic misunderstandings between team members.
- Continuous feedback loops catch minor frustrations before they escalate into major cultural issues.
- Leaders must model the exact behaviour they expect from their staff.
Workplace toxicity rarely happens overnight. It creeps in through small, unchecked actions – a dismissive comment in a meeting, a manager playing favourites, or a high performer getting away with poor behaviour. Over time, these micro-decisions create an environment where people feel undervalued and unsafe.
When staff spend their energy navigating office politics or avoiding difficult colleagues, they have little left for actual work. The cost of this dysfunction shows up in high turnover rates, increased absenteeism, and declining team performance.
Fixing a broken environment takes time and deliberate effort. You need to identify the root causes of the dysfunction and implement structural changes to prevent those behaviours from returning.
You cannot fix a problem you do not fully understand. Many leaders try to solve cultural issues with superficial perks – like free lunches or casual Fridays – while ignoring the underlying structural problems.
Toxicity often grows from unclear expectations or poor communication. When people do not know what success looks like, they become anxious. This anxiety breeds competition and resentment. You need to look closely at how work is assigned, how decisions are made, and how information flows through your business.
A helpful way to map this out is by looking at The Compono Culture, Engagement & Performance Model. This framework shows how the environment you create directly influences how engaged your staff feel, which then dictates their performance output.
If the culture is broken, engagement drops, and performance suffers. To fix it, you must evaluate whether your current processes support your team or actively work against them.
One of the fastest ways to destroy a team's morale is to tolerate a "brilliant jerk". These are the employees who deliver excellent individual results but treat their colleagues poorly. They might meet all their KPIs, but they leave a trail of frustrated and demotivated peers in their wake.
When management looks the other way because of someone's high output, it sends a clear message to the rest of the business. It tells your staff that performance matters more than respect. This is exactly why Atlassian won't be the only company turning away brilliant jerks.
You have to draw a hard line. High performance must include working well with others. If an employee cannot treat their colleagues with basic professional respect, their individual output is not worth the cultural damage they cause.
Have direct conversations with these individuals. Make it clear that their behaviour is a performance issue. If they refuse to change, you need to be willing to let them go to protect the broader team.
Sometimes what looks like a toxic culture is actually just chronic misunderstanding. People have different natural preferences for how they communicate, process information, and execute tasks. When these differences are ignored, friction occurs.
For instance, someone who is highly analytical and detail-oriented might clash with a colleague who prefers to move fast and brainstorm big ideas. Without a framework to understand these differences, the analytical person might view the creative person as careless. The creative person might view the analytical one as a roadblock.
This is where understanding work personality becomes incredibly useful. When you map out the natural tendencies of your team members, you give them a shared language to discuss their differences objectively. It removes the personal sting from professional disagreements.
The Compono platform helps managers uncover these dynamics. By mapping out how your team prefers to work, you can assign tasks more effectively and reduce unnecessary conflict.
A toxic culture thrives in silence. When employees feel they cannot speak up about issues without facing retaliation, problems fester. The traditional annual engagement survey is completely inadequate for catching these issues in real time.
If a manager starts exhibiting toxic behaviour in February, waiting until November to ask the team how they feel is a massive failure of leadership. By that point, your best people will have already updated their resumes and left.
You need to establish continuous feedback loops. Check in with your staff regularly using short, targeted questions about their day-to-day experience. Make it safe for them to raise concerns.
When you gather this feedback, you must act on it visibly. If staff raise an issue and nothing changes, they will simply stop participating. Show them that their input leads to tangible improvements in their working environment.
You cannot mandate a positive culture from the top down while behaving poorly yourself. Staff pay far more attention to what leaders do than what they say. If a manager frequently interrupts people, sends aggressive emails on weekends, or gossips about other departments, the team will adopt those exact habits.
Fixing a toxic environment requires leaders to take a hard look in the mirror. You need to ask yourself how your own actions might be contributing to the dysfunction. This requires a high degree of self-awareness and a willingness to accept uncomfortable feedback.
When leaders admit their mistakes and actively work to improve their own conduct, it permits the rest of the team to do the same. Vulnerability from leadership builds trust faster than almost any other intervention.
Set clear boundaries for acceptable behaviour and hold everyone – including senior management – to that standard. Consistency is the only way to prove that you are serious about change.
Key insights
- Superficial perks cannot fix deep structural issues within a workplace environment.
- Tolerating high-performing but toxic employees damages overall team output and morale.
- Mapping work personalities helps teams navigate conflict and communicate more effectively.
- Regular, continuous feedback is essential for catching and addressing bad behaviour early.
- Cultural change must start with leaders modelling the exact conduct they expect from their staff.
Understanding your team's dynamics is the first step to building a healthier, more productive workplace. See how you can measure engagement and improve culture with the right tools.
Changing deeply ingrained habits takes time. You might see minor improvements within a few months of setting new boundaries, but a complete cultural turnaround typically takes a year or more of consistent effort.
The very first step is acknowledging the problem openly. Leaders need to name the specific behaviours that are causing issues and commit publicly to changing how the team operates.
You must address the behaviour directly with clear examples. Provide them with coaching and specific targets for improvement. If their conduct does not change within a set timeframe, they need to be removed from their leadership position.
It is incredibly difficult to fix a culture if the toxicity originates from the very top. Unless the CEO is willing to undergo serious coaching and change their approach, middle managers can only create small pockets of healthy culture within their own teams.
Many businesses keep toxic employees because they possess specialised knowledge or deliver strong short-term financial results. Leaders often miscalculate the hidden costs of this decision, ignoring the high turnover and low morale these individuals cause.
If you'd like to talk through how Compono can support your team, we're happy to walk you through it. No pressure, just a conversation.