How A Healthy Workplace Environment Affects Your Bottomline

“if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together” is certainly something you were not expecting to read about in a healthy workplace etiquette series right? Well, the past 2 series have explained how to avoid office politics, and how not to offend your co-workers. All those blogs were building the foundation for today’s blog. Why must there be a healthy environment for your to work in, and how it may affect your bottom line.

One African slang proverb can be loosely translated to mean “Ambulance Drivers must always make sure to go to a patient with one thought in mind, to do their jobs”. This means when you go to work, you must, try and mind your own business, do your job and go back home. While it encourages us to carry out our mandates without minding things that do not concern us, because we have obligations to meet, we have to make sure we are working in an environment that is good for us. The problem is we work with others, we do not operate in a bubble, we need others to go far and we cannot dictate how situations turn out. According to Career Contessa, your workplace environment is toxic when:

• there is poor communication
• there is too much office politics
• there is no forward movement or when there is stifled growth
• it constantly leaves you with a burnout
• there is no work-life balance
• there is high staff turnover

While we can all ignore the toxicity of our work environments because we have obligations we have to meet, truth is that toxicity will affect our bottom line. Our productivity and efficiency are stifled by toxic work environments. This will in turn lead to a lack of motivation and poor employee morale. This will therefore impact production which will cascade into the organisation taking a financial or reputation knock which affects many people on many levels.

In short, a healthy workplace environment ensures that everything at an organisation is flowing smoothly like clockwork, continuously serving the purpose it was established for. An unhealthy environment is bad for the organisation and many people downstream. Management and the entire workforce must try and make sure the workplace is conducive for everyone by constantly consulting and communicating with relevant people because an unhealthy environment is bad for everyone’s bottom line.