In a recent interview with BBC News, Elon Musk revealed that he sometimes sleeps on the sofa at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.

He told the BBC that there’s “a library nobody goes to on the seventh floor and there’s a couch there and sometimes I sleep there.”

This echoes when a previous employee, Esther Crawford, slept at the Twitter office in February to prove her loyalty after Musk set strict deadlines and sent details of upcoming firings.

Soon after, however, Crawford was fired, despite her efforts.

What is toxic work culture, and how can employers and HR teams avoid setting bad examples?

Toxic workplaces and rage-appliers

One of the biggest impacts that a toxic workplace has on employees is encouraging them to rage-apply to new roles, according to new research by Walters People.

Two-thirds of white-collar professionals (60%) have admitted to ‘rage applying’ to a new job since the beginning of the year – with a toxic workplace culture (56%) being the primary motivating factor.

The trend – which has seen a spike since New Year appraisals – occurs when professionals retaliate to a bad day at work by firing out multiple applications to new job roles.  

Of those who admitted to rage applying in the past six months, almost half (40%) stated that they had applied to multiple new roles within a short space of time.

Toxic workplaces are to blame

The leading issue provoking rage appliers is a toxic workplace culture – with over half (56%) of professionals stating this was the primary reason they took to the keyboard to apply for new jobs.  

A fifth of workers blamed an unmanageable workload (20%), followed by 18 percent who state that poor work-life balance continues to be an issue. 

Just 6 percent said that a disagreement with management led to them rage-applying in the past six months.

Janine Blacksley, Director of Walters People, says:

“By and large it continues to be a candidate-driven market – with more jobs than people available – so ‘rage applying’ is really something that most employers cannot afford to happen. 

“Interestingly it is not issues relating to pay or progression that is creating this knee-jerk reaction – but the work environment itself, something well within the control of the employer. 

“Toxic workplace cultures can very much be invisible but the knock-on effect to employee happiness is significant – from a staff member’s mental and physical safety in the workplace, productivity levels, ideas generation and innovation. 

“As a result, we are increasingly seeing more ‘culture matches’ in the hiring process – where both the company and prospective employee are vocal about what kind of worker or workplace they are looking for.”

Amelia Brand

Amelia Brand is the Editor for HRreview, and host of the HR in Review podcast series. With a Master’s degree in Legal and Political Theory, her particular interests within HR include employment law, DE&I, and wellbeing within the workplace. Prior to working with HRreview, Amelia was Sub-Editor of a magazine, and Editor of the Environmental Justice Project at University College London, writing and overseeing articles into UCL’s weekly newsletter. Her previous academic work has focused on philosophy, politics and law, with a special focus on how artificial intelligence will feature in the future.