Dennis Pachernegg
Sep 3, 2018 · 1 min read

Companies have a vital interest in fixing toxic workplaces. It is well known that toxic workplaces reduce employees’ productivity, and thus negatively impact the bottom line. They don’t even have to be good people to realize that. It’s pure economic self-interest.

It’s reasonable to assume that a company who has successfully fixed the issue would outperform their competitors because of superior productivity, doing more work with less people, undercutting the rates in the market, and expand like mad. Furthermore, such a company would have an excellent reputation as an employer, thus receive more applications, which would allow it to hire only the best of the best. It would be a positive feedback loop par excellence.

So why doesn’t it happen already? Why hasn’t at least one of the thousands of tech companies fixed the issue, and is now booming as a consequence?

Maybe because it can’t be fixed, period.
Maybe because it can only be fixed at prohibitively high costs.
Maybe because no company ever tried until now. (very unlikely, but not impossible.)

But we can be sure about one thing: Once people know how to fix it, it will spread like mad, either because every company will want to increase its productivity, or because those companies who don’t apply it will be priced out of the market, and perish.

    Dennis Pachernegg

    Written by

    Berlin-based brand strategist and copywriter. Into blockchain, complexity and integral stuff.