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'Toxic' Workplaces, Part I

Getting Rid of Mistrust Creates More Productive Employees

MADISON, Wis. -- The workplace can be likened to a war of sorts. Peace and harmony one day, a raging battlefield the next.

Many employees just accept their workplace as a fact of life – good or bad. Many offices are simply not a healthy place to be when employee's treat each other with mistrust, jealousy and animosity.

Twenty-nine percent of workers say the workplace has negative effect on health.

A Gallup survey found three in ten U.S. workers say their work place is so unhealthy it's actually harming them physically.

While two-thirds of business owners say health care costs are hurting them, most don't consider the financial drain of how "content" workers are.

But, Gallup estimated lower productivity of actively disengaged workers costs the U.S. economy about $300 billion annually.

At the MATC Business Procurement Assistance Center, the work environment was getting bad, when managers sought help.

"Feelings get hurt and we're not being productive people," said MATC employee Denise Kornetzke. "We don't want to come to work."

"People are pointing fingers at one another," said MATC employee Chris Gruneberg. "People are sniping at one another."

"When you walk into the office you shouldn't feel this burden on your shoulders, and when you leave it shouldn't still be there," said Gruneberg.

But, for many Americans work is indeed a burden.

And, the cost to businesses is skyrocketing.

"We suffer physically, we suffer emotionally, we suffer spiritually because we lose all hope," said Business Consultant Kerwin Steffen. "We suffer intellectually in our organizations because we can't focus, we can't be creative, we can't be innovative."

Kornetzke recognized the symptoms in the office she manages.

"If we didn't do something I wouldn't have been here," said Kornetzke. "We would see turnover. I was not happy."

Kornetzke knew something was broken but didn't know how to fix it, so she turned to a workplace therapist of sorts.

Like the legendary coach Vince Lombardi, Kerwin Steffen is an expert team builder, embracing how the human spirit -- team spirit -- can respond and achieve given the right circumstances.

Yet, he said, it is the most frequently ignored component of a business.

"We take care of all kinds of critical systems in our organizations," said Steffen. "We manage everything from our accounting systems to our information technology systems, our safety and security, our parking, some people even take care of their coffee and break systems more carefully than they take care of this system -- the team spirit."

"Every one of us agreed that team spirit was important," said Kornetzke. "We will continue to monitor it, manage it, and now it's our number one priority."

And, since their work with Steffen, the MATC Business Procurement Assistance Center achieved both personal and professional growth.

"We've doubled the number of federal dollars that come in to our center and it's based on being able to deliver quality responsive service," said Kornetzke.

"It's a good place to work," she said. "We kid each other about it a lot, but that's part of it too because you can relate to each other openly and honestly."

"Before we went through this, people didn't communicate with each other and now they're joking with each other asking each other out to lunch asking about their families."

'Toxic' Workplaces, Part II

Expert: The Problem Isn't One Person -- It's 'Team Spirit'

MADISON, Wis. -- Negative relationships at work might be a big reason why so many Americans aren't happy with their jobs.

A new Gallup survey says the current number of truly engaged employees is only 29 percent, and 54 percent said they are basically checked out at work -- putting in time but not energy or passion into their job.

Do negative work relationships really matter? Some estimates put the losses of negative work environments at $300 billion a year. Although it's not that hard to identify if you have the problem, fixing it is where the real work begins, reports Pam Tauscher in Part II her special series on toxic workplaces.

Kerwin Steffen doesn't drive an ambulance but maybe he should because he responds to emergencies -- not behind the wheel, but behind the computer.

"Have you ever walked into a place, and you could just feel the dark cloud in that place?" Steffen said. "I always get an affirmative answer, and, sadly, some say, 'Yeah, it's where I go to work every day.'"

It is the lucky office where managers recognize the need to ask for help when relationships hit rock bottom.

"They were in tears when we were done when they recognized that they had inadvertently created such a toxic spirit in their group that some of them literally could not survive there," Steffen said, speaking of a group he worked with.

That spirit, Steffen said, determines whether companies and their employees are engaged or disinterested. And yet, most companies don't make any attempt at all to recognize it or manage it.

"It's made up of the human will of each person in the group, and unless you manage it, as I often tell groups, it plays you like a cheap piano and takes you down," Steffen said.

Many groups Steffen meets with are already down. First, Steffen brings everyone face to face -- something that has become rare in today's workplace.

"To confront someone that maybe you were just e-mailing is a difficult process," he said.

Denise Kornetzke turned to Steffen when she saw her office was in a tailspin. She credits Steffen with helping her staff learn to appreciate each other's strengths and weaknesses by learning more about different personality types.

"Part of it was we didn't have an appreciation for each other's strengths," said Kornetzke, a program manager for the Business Procurement Assistance Center. "We didn't know each other's strengths because we didn't talk to each other."

Steffen helped them look at what their preferred style was and then at the preferred style of the other members of the group, and how that affected their interactions, which in turn affected their collective spirit.

Now, things are improving in Kornetzke's group.

"We have team agreements," she said. "We uphold our team agreements -- we can't talk about each other when that person isn't present."

The transformation isn't instant, and it isn't permanent. It takes continuous effort because, by its nature, team spirit is constantly in a downward spiral.

"It's constantly going down unless we're lifting it up," Steffen said. "But it doesn't take that much. All it really takes is us looking at 'it,' saying, 'How is it today? Is it positive or negative, and what can we as a group do to lift it up?'"

"I don't think our situation before we did this was unlike any other work environment," Kornetzke said. "But it takes faith that this is the right course of action, and it takes everyone to believe in it on your team."