How the right tech could fix a toxic work environment

While many employees are increasingly fearful of the role of technology in the workplace, the right platforms can actually improve and protect the employee experience. 

Sixty-four percent of employees have experienced a toxic work environment, with 44% placing the blame on their corporate leadership team, according to a recent poll from job search and career development platform The Muse. As organizations ponder how to improve culture and employee happiness, leveraging more technology in the right places can ensure employees feel safe. 

"When employers allow toxicity to remain, it leaves them wondering why they're having high turnover, low retention, slow productivity and an overall disconnect within their teams," says Jared Pope, founder and CEO of Work Shield, a workplace misconduct solution. "It all comes down to the kind of data employers are collecting — and the only way to get the right data on your culture is to first make sure employees feel like they can report on it safely." 

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Traditionally, organizations have tried to handle workplace toxicity themselves through training, DEI strategies, whistleblower hotlines and open door policies. Still, 75% of workplace harassment incidents go unreported per year, according to SHRM, proving these efforts scarcely address what's actually to blame. 

"Regulations, rules, inclusivity efforts and more education are all great things," Pope says. "But no matter what employers do, if there's still a fear of retaliation, of being ridiculed and of job loss, many employees decide it's not worth reporting." 

When employees do report an incident, it's often passed to their manager to address it and mediate. In some cases, the complaints make it back to the individual the report was about. As a result, 57% of employees believe their workplace does not take harassment seriously, according to workplace insights platform Gitnux. Additionally, 67% of employees who reported harassment said they faced retaliation within their workplace.

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Investing in a third party tech platform, like Work Shield, not only keeps information private, but it also keeps workplaces accountable to finding a solution. Technology can also be unbiased, and can identify problem individuals faster than people-first methods.  

"When a company partners with us, all of their team members can report to our specific customized portal for them," Pope says. "Once those issues come in, our platform enables automatic communications from all the relevant parties, including the investigator, company leaders and the employee that filed the incident. We take the responsibility off of employers and instead just give them the facts and facilitate talks of resolution."

In one case, Work Shield once worked with a company where a large number of the harassment and toxic behavior reports came down to the same manager. While a training and coaching approach may have worked in other scenarios of workplace toxicity, the better strategy here was to remove the manager altogether.  

Read more: Company culture vs. team culture: How organizations can have both

"Tech platforms increase actionable items that employers can take because they're actually finding out more information about a company's culture than a single HR department could," Pope says. "It gets down to what's happening on the day-to-day that employers can't see and that people aren't always willing to disclose. Once employees know that their company is partnered with a platform that's going to get to the bottom of it without threatening their safety, all of a sudden the fear of reporting is gone."

While outsourcing the harassment and reporting practice to a third party may seem daunting, he urges employers to consider the overall benefits of removing themselves from the process. 

"If you want to keep to the old ways, you need to ask yourself if you're getting the best out of your population," Pope says. "At the end of the day, you can't control whether your population is making inappropriate jokes or comments, but you can control whether you can give people affected a voice to be heard."