During my career as a civil servant and employment lawyer, I’ve often seen how the culture of a team or organisation can create a toxic environment. This is not only bad for the business, but it can also do enormous damage to the health and wellbeing of people working there. It’s a passion of mine to help equip individuals to recognise, deal with and avoid the harmful effects of toxicity. These are my top tips.

Many factors cause toxicity in a workplace: untrustworthy leaders, non-inclusivity, grade-ism, favouritism, poor leadership, and a lack of empathy and respect. Staff working in toxic workplaces typically describe experiences such as a lack of collaboration, keeping their heads down, normalised poor behaviour, feeling bullied and harassed and a climate of fear.

Unethical and poor behaviours drive toxicity and, left unchecked, lead to unhealthy working environments. You may spend hours agonising about what you’ve done or what you could do differently. Understanding that it’s someone else’s bad behaviour—driven by their own motives—that causes toxicity can save precious time ruminating and self-blaming.

A good definition of a toxic personality is “anyone who demonstrates a pattern of counter-productive work behaviours that debilitate individuals and teams”. Toxic behaviour is not an ‘off day’ — we all have those. It’s when there’s a consistent pattern in someone’s counter-productive behaviours which has a debilitating effect on people around them.

Workplace toxicity is harmful and pernicious. People are in a constant state of stress and anxiety; they become hyper-aware and direct their energies towards surviving the day. In turn, this stress loop affects attention, perception, short-term memory, learning and even the ability to find the right words. Like a phone in power saving mode, ‘just surviving’ degrades your abilities to multi-task and perform at your best.

Recognise and accept there’s a problem. Keep a diary or log of what’s happening and how it makes you feel. Find a friend, coach or mentor to help you seek clarity, challenge assumptions and give you validation. Make a plan—what steps can you take and what might hold you back?