10 Signs You're in a Toxic Workplace (And What to Do About It)

Do you wake up on Sunday nights with a knot in your stomach about Monday morning? Do you walk into work already bracing yourself, already on guard? If that's where you are right now, I want you to consider something: that feeling isn't just stress. It might be telling you something important about the environment you're in.

I'm Lucy Caldicott, founder of ChangeOut and an executive coach with thirty years of leadership experience, including time as a CEO. In that time I've worked inside toxic organisations, I've coached people trying to survive them, and I've helped leaders who were inadvertently creating them without realising it. These ten signs are the ones I come back to again and again, because they're the patterns that show up most consistently, and the ones that people most often dismiss or explain away before things get serious.

What makes a workplace toxic?

Toxic workplaces aren't always dramatic. They rarely involve cartoon villains. More often they're places where the conditions for good work have quietly broken down, where trust has eroded, where people have stopped saying what they really think, where certain voices are consistently heard and others are consistently ignored. The signs are often subtle at first, which is precisely why it helps to know what to look for.

The ten signs

The first is constant dread. Not the ordinary low-level nerves of a busy job, but a persistent anxiety that starts before you've even arrived. If Sunday evenings feel like bracing for impact every single week, pay attention to that.

The second is micromanagement and control. When managers can't delegate, when every decision has to be approved, when people's autonomy is routinely undermined, it signals a fundamental lack of trust, and trust is the foundation of a functioning team.

The third is fear of speaking up. In a healthy workplace, people can raise concerns, disagree with decisions, and flag problems without worrying about the consequences. When that psychological safety is absent, the culture is silencing more than just individual voices.

The fourth is exclusion and inequity. When certain perspectives are consistently centred and others are routinely sidelined, often along lines of race, gender, seniority or social connection, that's not just a culture problem. It's an equity problem, and it does real harm to real people.

The fifth is high staff turnover. People leaving is one of the strongest signals a workplace is in trouble, and one of the most overlooked. When talented people keep leaving, it's worth asking seriously what they're leaving from.

The sixth is a blame culture, where mistakes are punished publicly and learning is an afterthought. Fear is not a sustainable management strategy, even if it produces short-term compliance.

The seventh is the absence of any real boundary around working hours: late-night emails treated as normal, availability expected around the clock, people guilted for saying no. This erodes wellbeing over time in ways that are hard to reverse.

The eighth is leadership denial, where genuine concerns are raised and met with "that's just how we do things here." That phrase, in my experience, is one of the most reliable indicators that a culture has stopped being able to see itself clearly.

The ninth is constant crisis mode, where everything is urgent, nothing is stable, and people never get the chance to recharge. Sustained firefighting is exhausting, and it's often a sign that the organisation is avoiding dealing with something more fundamental.

The tenth is the impact on your physical and mental health. Insomnia, persistent anxiety, recurring illness, a sense of dread you can't quite shake. Your body often knows something is wrong before you've consciously named it. If your health is suffering, it's worth taking that seriously rather than pushing through.

What now?

If several of these feel familiar, you're not imagining it and you're not weak. These are recognisable patterns, and naming them is the first step to working out what to do next.

Whether that means finding ways to protect yourself while you're still in the role, starting to plan a way out, or having a conversation with someone in a leadership position about what needs to change, the next step will depend on your specific situation. I've written separately about what to do when you know your workplace is toxic but leaving isn't an option right now, and that might be a useful place to start.

Key takeaways

Toxic workplaces rarely announce themselves. The signs are often gradual: dread, silence, exclusion, instability, impossible expectations, and the slow erosion of your health and confidence. If you recognise more than a few of these, trust what you're noticing. And if you'd like to talk through your situation with someone who has seen these patterns from every angle, including the inside, I'd welcome that conversation.