Nearly a fifth of workers say their workplace is toxic: poll

Nearly 1 out of 5 employees say their place of work is very or somewhat toxic, according to a poll by the American Psychological Association (APA).

“The number of individuals who report experiencing a toxic workplace without protection from harm is troubling,” Arthur C. Evans, chief executive officer at the America Psychological Association, said in a statement.  

“No one should feel fear at work. It is clear there is much work to be done to foster a positive work environment for all workers in the nation.” 

The poll also found that those who reported working in a toxic environment were more than three times as likely as their counterparts in healthy workplaces to say that they “have experienced harm to their mental health” at work.  

The APA’s poll found that 52 percent of people with toxic workplaces said they have experienced harm to their mental health at work, while 15 percent of those with healthy work environments said the same.  

In total, more than 1 in 5 workers — or 22 percent — said they have experienced harm to their mental health at work and 22 percent of employees said they have experienced workplace harassment over the past 12 months. 

That is a sizeable jump from last year, when 14 percent of workers said they had experienced harassment at work, according to the APA.  

The rate of toxic workplaces varied by industry, the APA also discovered.  

Workers in customer, client or patient service jobs were more likely to report suffering from verbal abuse at work than those doing manual labor or office work, according to the poll.  

Among respondents, 22 percent of office workers and 23 of manual laborers said they had experienced verbal abuse.  

Meanwhile, 31 percent of employees in customer, client or patient service jobs said they had.  

But people performing manual labor were far more likely to report having experienced a physical threat at work, with 12 percent of manual laborers polled saying that someone within their organization “displayed physical violence” toward them.  

Just 5 percent of office workers and 6 percent of customer, client or patient service workers said the same.  

The poll was conducted April 17-27 with 2,515 employed adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points using a 95 percent confidence level.