Leaders and HR professionals spend a lot of time addressing overt workplace bullying. What often slips under the radar is the quieter, subtler version that occurs via workplace cliques. These small, tight groups can seem harmless, even positive, but they carry a hidden cost. In hybrid workplaces,...

Fear of lost revenue or performance if they go. “Too hard to replace” skills or client relationships. Leaders avoiding conflict. Mistaking bullying for “drive” or “high standards.” Managing up well while managing down badly.  Results trump respect. Rules are...

Employees aren’t quitting quietly anymore, it seems they’re hanging on. The buzzwords may change, but the underlying story is about how people respond to uncertainty. A couple of years ago, the headlines focused on disengagement: employees doing the minimum as a way of protecting themselves...

I’ve seen first-hand how hard it is to translate survey results into real action. Every NHS trust dutifully runs the NHS National Survey each year, but are leaders actively using it to improve workplace culture, or just going through the motions?...

In medicine, a diagnosis like IBS can be reassuring. It acknowledges that something is genuinely wrong, even if we can’t pin it down. In organisations, “culture” serves a similar function. It gives leaders and teams a way to talk about hidden dynamics, tensions, and the emotional undercurrents....

Most people associate toxicity with bad bosses or difficult colleagues. But these are symptoms, not the cause. According to a 2024 conceptual review by Priesemuth and Schminke, toxic work culture is not about isolated behaviours. It’s about shared perceptions of an organisation....