Organizational Toxin Handlers: The Critical Role of HR, OD, and Coaching Practitioners in Managing Toxic Workplace Situations

© The Author(s) 2020

T. A. DanielOrganizational Toxin Handlershttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51685-7_1

1. Toxin Handlers: Who They Are and What They Do

Teresa A. Daniel¹  

(1)

Sullivan University, Louisville, KY, USA

Teresa A. Daniel

Email: tdaniel@sullivan.edu

Layoffs, harassment, discrimination, mergers and acquisitions, personality conflicts, or an abusive boss are just a few of the many types of workplace situations that can generate intense emotional pain for employees—feelings like anger, frustration, stress, disappointment, and anxiety. For those required to report to work during the deadly #coronavirus outbreak, there is also now an element of abject fear that going to work may result in their own death or the demise of someone they love. With the lone exception of the pandemic, most of these workplace events are predictable—even somewhat inevitable. It is the way organizations handle them (or do not) that can create a serious problem for both employees and, ultimately, the organizations that they serve.

If these types of situations are managed poorly, the chronic anger or prolonged stress these situations create results in an undesirable by-product known as organizational toxicity . The word toxic comes from the Greek toxikon which means arrow poison. In a literal sense, the term in its original form means to kill (poison) in a targeted way (arrow). Over time, the buildup of these toxic emotions will create a workplace culture where employees feel devalued, demoralized, and often hopeless—and most assuredly not productive or actively engaged.

Peter Frost (2003) first identified and coined the term for the special role some employees take on in an effort to alleviate this toxicity for employees—he referred to these individuals as toxin handlers . He described them as people within an organization who voluntarily shoulder the sadness, frustration, bitterness, and the anger that are endemic to organizational life. Think of it this way: they act much like a kidney or the immune system in a human body—by neutralizing, dissipating, and dispersing organizational toxins that build up over time as a result of difficult decisions made by the organization, the consequences of which impact employees.

To get a better handle on this phenomenon and to see if HR practitioners could identify with it, we interviewed 26 highly educated and experienced HR professionals. What we found was really not that surprising—they reported that a central aspect of their role is to act as an organizational toxin handler (Daniel, 2018; see also, Daniel, 2017, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c). In fact, 58% of the study’s participants said that they helped employees deal with toxic emotions on a daily basis (Daniel, 2018).

A high-level summary of this research, which is foundational to this book, is included as Appendix I should you wish to read more (Daniel, 2018). And for those of you who are more academically inclined or just wish to more closely examine how the results from the study were derived, a more comprehensive examination of the study’s design and findings is included as Appendix II (Daniel, 2018).

You will see that quotes from the experienced HR professionals who were interviewed for this study are included throughout the following chapters to help explain key points. It is only fair to warn you at this point that hearing from practitioners—in their own words—may be painful and cause you to remember some of your own difficult workplace experiences. As tough (and sometimes poignant) as it may be to read them, their unvarnished perspectives are included because they help to underscore how organizational toxicity actually affects both the organization and its employees, including practitioners such as yourself.

This new label—organizational toxin handler—describes an old issue that most of you will quickly understand to be a persistent workplace problem for HR practitioners. In fact, you have likely personally experienced it at some point in your career and may even experience it multiple times per week. In all likelihood, you engage in these type of activities with some frequency but perhaps just didn’t yet have a term or label with which to describe it. Now you do.

When engaged in this work, toxin handlers are involved in six core activities: empathetic listening, suggest solutions and provide resources, work behind the scenes and provide a safe space, confidential counseling, strategize communications and reframe difficult messages, and coach and advise managers. If you take a moment to reflect on what you do during a normal day, I would venture to guess that this is sounding like pretty familiar territory now, isn’t it?

HR, OD, and coaching practitioners are regularly confronted by distressed employees and organizational leaders who bring emotionally charged problems to them with the expectation that they will receive help to resolve the issue. Any further reference to HR or HR practitioners is also meant to include OD and coaching practitioners since the nature of their work so closely aligns and frequently overlaps. For purposes of this book, though, I will generally refer to them collectively as HR or simply as practitioners for ease of reference.

By engaging in this work, organizational toxin handlers enable other employees to stay focused and do their jobs. Without them, the organizational toxicity would continue to build, resulting in higher levels of turnover, increased health costs, more litigation, and reduced levels of employee morale and productivity.

Toxin handlers care deeply about employees. They feel a strong need to listen to and assist employees in dealing with their problems, whether personal and organizational—they tend to think of themselves as inherently fixers.

Although toxin handlers routinely assist employees, at the same time they also feel a strong responsibility to support senior leaders and drive positive organizational outcomes. Navigating these competing role demands (which are often in direct conflict) is not easy. As a result, the role is inherently paradoxical and the nature of this required balancing act tends to create significant personal stress for practitioners.

Moreover, the toxin handling role is dangerous because of the personal risk it poses to the practitioner’s personal well-being over time. They commonly experience significant physical and emotional exhaustion, feelings of sadness and anger, high stress, lack of sleep, and burnout. In addition, their personal relationships, overall health, and home life are also often negatively affected. This causes some to seek personal counseling and/or medical attention as a result of the excessive tension and strain they experience at work.

Pictures are often helpful in illuminating new concepts such as that of organizational toxin handler. To further accelerate your understanding of this role, here is a conceptual model which may help you to visualize the organizational role and how it impacts employee well-being and organizational effectiveness (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Conceptual model of HR’s role as organizational toxin handler (Daniel, 2018)

The heart is a key element in visualizing and understanding the results of the study given that it demonstrates that HR practitioners are empathetic and compassionate listeners. The arrow to Drives Career Choice demonstrates that their empathetic and compassionate nature drives their career choice—becoming an HR professional. The arrow back to the heart demonstrates that it is this combination of empathy and compassion, in addition to the role itself, that works in tandem to drive employees to seek their counsel.

The sweet spot occurs when practitioners work to solve problems for both employees and their organization by being HR fixers—helping employees manage the toxic emotions that they feel as a result of workplace decisions and issues. They do this by providing care and concern for employees so that they feel understood and valued, while maintaining a sharp awareness of the need to keep their organizations functioning and profitable.

In the chapters that follow, we will delve further into the types of situations that create organizational toxicity, who toxin handlers are and what they actually do, how they do it, why organizations need them, and what companies can do to minimize the harm to their well-being resulting from the toxin handling role. The risks and dangers associated with the toxin handling role will also be examined, along with what practitioners themselves can do to protect themselves from the increased levels of stress, burnout, and emotional and physical exhaustion that they often experience due to their engagement in this important work. Stay with me to learn more about these topics—and more—in the coming chapters.

It may be useful to initially examine why toxic emotions are so prevalent at work to give you some context for the problem and how it has evolved over the past 30 years. As a result, we will next examine in Chap. 2 some of the economic and legal issues that have contributed to changes in the American workplace—changes that have increased the organizational toxicity that currently exists for so many employees.

References

Daniel, T. A. (2017, Winter). Managing toxic emotions at work: An examination of HR’s unique role as the organizational shock absorber. Employment Relations Today, 43(4), 13–19.Crossref

Daniel, T. A. (2018). Managing toxic emotions at work: An empirical study of HR’s role and its impact on personal well-being and organizational effectiveness. https://​doi.​org/​10.​13140/​RG.​2.​2.​16315.​26408.

Daniel, T. A. (2019a, March 6). Viewpoint: HR as toxin handlers. Society for Human Resource Management HR News. Retrieved from https://​www.​shrm.​org/​resourcesandtool​s/​hr-topics/​employee-relations/​pages/​are-you-a-toxin-handler.​aspx.

Daniel, T. A. (2019b, March 13). Viewpoint: How HR can protect itself from toxic emotions. Society for Human Resource Management HR News. Retrieved from https://​www.​shrm.​org/​resourcesandtool​s/​hr-topics/​employee-relations/​pages/​viewpoint-how-hr-can-protect-itself-from-toxic-emotions.​aspx.

Daniel, T. A. (2019c, March 25). Viewpoint: How toxin handlers reduce organizational pain. Society for Human Resource Management HR News. Retrieved from https://​www.​shrm.​org/​ResourcesAndTool​s/​hr-topics/​employee-relations/​Pages/​Viewpoint-How-Toxin-Handlers-Reduce-Organizational-Pain.​aspx.

Frost, P. J. (2003). Toxic emotions at work. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

© The Author(s) 2020

T. A. DanielOrganizational Toxin Handlershttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51685-7_2

2. What Causes Toxic Workplace Situations? A Focus on the Economic and Legal Drivers

Teresa A. Daniel¹  

(1)

Sullivan University, Louisville, KY, USA

Teresa A. Daniel

Email: tdaniel@sullivan.edu

Introduction

I suspect that many of you reading this book are all too familiar with situations in which you have to deal with the pain and emotion of employees caused by difficult workplace decisions or situations. Far too many American corporations are, to put it bluntly, in a state of chaos or disarray much of the time. Employees often come to work feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and sometimes bitter, and challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic have made the situation even worse. Why? Because organizational leaders consciously (or unwittingly) make difficult decisions without communicating the rationale behind the decision or taking the time to help employees make sense of the changes. As a result, conditions that lead to creation of a toxic workplace are created and you—HR, OD, and coaching practitioners—are left to clean up the mess.

To be fair, many of the decisions that leaders are required to make are hard—really hard—like decisions to merge or acquire, downsize, return employees to the office during a global pandemic, or to sell or close operations altogether. Leaders are not all inherently evil or mean-spirited (although some most decidedly are). They are simply in positions that require them to make decisions that affect people and their livelihoods. They sometimes misuse their power and engage in uncivil tactics (e.g. bullying, ignoring, name-calling, and the like) which causes employees to experience varying levels of organizational toxicity.

Circumstances during the past three decades have resulted in an excessive emphasis on efficiency and productivity. When the pendulum swings too far in this direction, the natural tendency of for-profit corporations is to evolve toward sweatshops and monopolies. Assuming this is the current situation, a credible argument can be made that trying to civilize corporations is much like trying to turn tigers into vegetarians. They will always be wild beasts by nature unless we tame them by changing our attitudes and expectations (and laws) about what is proper conduct in the workplace when it comes to the management of people. Some of the historical context which has fueled the growth of toxicity in the American workplace over the last 30 years will be examined next.

How We Got Here: Some Historical Background

A Relentless Focus on the Maximization of Profits

Many years ago, Milton Friedman wrote a highly influential New York Times essay in which he contended that the (only) responsibility of business is to maximize profits (Friedman, 1970). With limited exceptions, there has been widespread acceptance of his view since that time. Corporations obviously need to achieve results and be profitable, but that is only part of their responsibility. They also are responsible for maximizing all of their assets, including people. As noted by Kenneth Mason, quoted in Makower (2006):

The moral imperative all of us share in this world is that of getting the best return we can on whatever assets we are privileged to employ. What American business leaders too often forget is that this means all the assets employed—not just the financial assets but also the brains employed, the labor employed, the materials employed, and the land, air, and water employed. (p. 31)

Fueled by activist shareholders, private-equity firms, and bonuses based on stock prices, it seems that corporate leaders instead have become obsessed with maximizing quarterly profits—and they have been quite successful in doing so. In fact, the stock market has just recently hit all-time record highs in recent years (Thorbecke, 2020). Ironically, though, as corporate and investor profits continue to climb, real wages for American workers have barely budged in terms of their actual buying power (Gould, 2018).

Institutional investors have had great influence on corporate decision-making in recent years. They seem to believe that caring about anything except profits is inappropriate, and even possibly a violation of management’s fiduciary responsibility (Greider, 2003). As a result of this short-term focus, many companies fail to adequately consider the interests of their other key stakeholders: customers, employees, and society. The result is a de-humanizing of the American workplace. It has become a place where people are often treated badly and managers are rewarded for engaging in those very behaviors. As noted by Edwards (1996):

The forbidden truth is that we are living by a set of lies which are necessary for short-term profit, at the expense of human physical and psychological life and global environmental integrity. We are living in a system where power ensures that the requirements of profit take priority over the requirements of living things […]. Consequently, our freedom extends as far as, and no further than, the satisfaction of these requirements, with all else being declared neurosis, paranoia, communism, extremism, the work of the devil, or Neptunian nonsense. (p. 163)

This profit obsession has created significant changes for employees working in American corporations over the last 30 years. It is these changes that will be examined next.

Changes in the American Workplace

In the past, working for a corporation was significantly defined by promises. Corporations committed to provide employees with lifetime job security, fair compensation, health care, and a secure retirement plan. In exchange, employees promised to show up every day to perform their work while being loyal to the organization. Together, this unspoken understanding between employers and employees formed the implicit social contract of the work relationship (Kochan & Shulman, 2007).

This relationship often caused employees to feel like children—the company was the parent (e.g. giving direction as well as an allowance, while also providing security) and the employee was the dutiful child (e.g. following orders and not questioning authority in exchange for the protections and benefits offered by the organization). Though employees were often frustrated with the repetition of their jobs and the autocratic nature of their supervisors, these corporate promises were generally enough to justify the trade-offs.

The essential nature of this parent-child relationship remains in place at most organizations even today. While some companies have worked hard to develop cultures where employees are treated very well, others follow a more ruthless and domineering approach. Just like the actual parent-child relationship which exists at home, unless laws are directly and egregiously broken, there are no binding rules of behavior which require leaders to be kind to employees, or even civil.

This relationship developed as a result of the focus by organizations on efficiency. In large-scale operations, it was generally less expensive to purchase labor in bulk than to hire craftsmen by the hour to perform each task. For workers, this meant selling control over their time, energy, and talents to someone else. For corporations, the problem was utilization. Paying for 40 hours of labor if only 30 were needed was wasteful. The common understanding was (and still is) that all means of production—both human and technical—should be utilized to their fullest extent. Dealing with machines was less complex; they only had to be fueled and maintained. The humans, however, had to be managed; someone had to divide and coordinate the work, and to watch over the employees in order to make sure that they were productive and efficient.

Labor unions were then created to protect the rights of workers. As jobs were progressively automated, more educated workers were needed to meet the requirements of higher-skilled roles. Largely due to legislation, working conditions improved in terms of safety and health. While the legal definitions and fundamental nature of corporations remained intact and unchanged, the nature of the employment relationship did not (Greider, 2003, 2009).

Over time, who works, how work is carried out, and the conditions of employment have changed dramatically, but the public and organizational policies and practices governing work and the employment relationship (originally put in place in the 1930s to fit the industrial economy and workforce of that time) have not kept pace. The social contract that governed work and the trust that it engendered