Toxic organizational cultures and leadership have led to major reputational failures, with the greatest impact felt by the people who dedicate their careers to working for these organizations. And yet organizations do not become toxic overnight. They do not consciously set out to break rules and regulations, nor do they actively seek wrongdoing. This book defines toxic culture, explains how toxic cultures emerge over time, and provides practical approaches supported by in-depth research for overcoming a toxic culture at the individual, team, and organizational level. Pragmatic and applicable, the book provides a call to action that can be applied in any type of organization. While the role of leadership in toxic cultures is acknowledged, the book sets out four distinct stages to embedding toxic cultures and draws on examples from leading organizations and companies to illustrate each stage. The book then identifies interventions and levers that can be implemented by executives, boards, and HR practitioners to prevent toxicity and to change toxic cultures back to healthy, positive workplaces. Drawing on research and interviews with senior HR leaders and executives, the book provides: – An understanding of the four stages of toxic cultures and the impact of performance pressures in driving toxicity – An appreciation of the role of senior leadership and personality traits – Practical tools and guidance on interventions for practitioners to build and sustain a healthy and positive workplace. Senior executives, HR, and organizational development practitioners in local and global organizations spanning a range of industry sectors will find this book invaluable. The book is also highly relevant to consultants working in the field of corporate culture and change.

The book helps HR practitioners understand corporate-level concepts and their relevance to the key strategic agendas of organizations by drawing on a wide range of ideas from branding, marketing, communications, public relations and reputation management. It then examines how effective people management strategies and the role of HR specialist can contribute to this corporate agenda. This contribution lies in four key areas: organizational communications strategies, developing compelling employee value propositions and employer branding; HR strategies, employer of choice policies and talent management; creating new forms of psychological contracts and building stronger individual-organizational linkages through employee identification, employee commitment and psychological ownership; and in developing supportive employee behaviors. The book is based on a new model of the links between HR, corporate reputation and branding, developed from an extensive review and synthesis of different bodies of management literature. This model has been refined from extensive case research and practical experience in building corporate reputations and brands. Specially researched cases include Orange, Aegon, Scottish Enterprise, Hudson International, BSkyB, Standard Life Investments and the Royal Bank of Scotland.