I hate HR: The myth of the toxic workplace

I hate HR. And, whilst we’re at it, I also hate teaching, policing, and the National Health Service.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that I hate HR people. Nor am I suggesting teachers, police officers, or employees within the NHS are deserving of my ire. But I still hate HR.

Put those pitchforks and torches down for a moment, and let me explain.

Most people who choose to work within HR do so because they care about people. This might be because they have altruistic tendencies or perhaps because they’ve had a poor experience with a previous employer. Either way – and for a host of other reasons – HR professionals tend to be attracted to the industry because of that people-focus view.

The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (the UK professional body for HR professionals) aims to champion better work and working lives. Their purpose is centred around a belief that work can, and should, benefit everyone. It’s this that attracts prospective HR professionals.

The day-to-day of HR isn’t people-first. It’s policies, risk management, and politics. The walk doesn’t match the talk.

Policing follows a similar pattern. It attracts individuals with high dutifulness (a personality trait associated with responsibility and rule-following) and a desire to make a difference in their communities. Yet much of policing work is bureaucracy, admin, and politics. The same goes for teaching. Or healthcare. Or, frankly, almost any profession that sells itself on purpose and mission.

And when that mismatch between promise and reality becomes clear, it doesn’t just create disappointment; it can create a profound sense of betrayal and toxicity.

But a workplace can’t be toxic in and of itself, any more than a tree can be toxic to every animal in a forest.

There are no toxic workplaces

“Toxicity” – real toxicity – is universal. Arsenic is toxic to everyone. So is mercury.

But workplaces? Workplaces are ecosystems. What’s toxic for one person might be energising for another. Some individuals thrive in high-pressure investment banks. Others feel suffocated. Some engineers love the chaotic, underdog energy of a start-up. Others find it maddening.

Elon Musk has been clear about his expectations of employees at X (formerly Twitter). He mandated a 40-hour-a-week return-to-office approach, and explicitly asked for employees to “work long hours and at a high level of intensity.” Only employees that had “exceptional performance” would be considered as “passing the grade.” The edict was equally explicit: Commit to the new demands or find a new job. Yet there are people queuing for roles at X/Twitter and a waiting list for applicants (Business Insider, 2022).

After the cultural shift towards these “hardcore” work expectations under Musk’s leadership, many decried the environment as toxic. And for many people, it absolutely was. It’s not the sort of environment that I, personally, would wish to work within.

But for others – those who shared those values around long hours, relentless focus, and radical risk-taking – it became a place of belonging. For them, it wasn’t toxic. It was thrilling.

If toxicity were inherent, this wouldn’t happen. Everyone would react the same way. But they don’t.

What creates the sense of “toxicity” is not the work itself. It’s the delta between what is promised (or perceived as promised) and what is actually delivered. It’s the difference between what we say we’re about and what the day-to-day experience is actually about.

In psychology, this is often referred to as the psychological contract. It’s an unwritten, emotional agreement between an individual and their employer. It’s the understanding – sometimes explicit, more often unspoken – of what both sides owe each other. When the psychological contract is honoured, even demanding environments feel fair. People know what they’re signing up for. When it’s broken, even the best perks can’t compensate for the emotional breach.

This is why workplaces that preach collaboration but reward ruthless individualism might feel particularly poisonous. Or why organisations that trumpet “work-life balance” while quietly expecting weekend emails create such deep resentment.

The damage isn’t just about workload or hours. It’s about incongruence between the internal tension we feel when our values and our environment no longer align.

In our HR example, practitioners expect to be creating places that are people-focused, safe and fair. That’s their understanding of the psychological contract. But the reality is that the role is often more focused on protecting the employer, mitigating risks to them – rather than the employee – and managing reactively.

This incongruity can make that internal tension damaging. Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory explains that human beings experience psychological discomfort when their behaviours conflict with their beliefs. Over time, that discomfort can turn into withdrawal, cynicism, and eventually, burnout (Festinger, 1957).

People also need autonomy, relatedness and competency to thrive, which are core factors in Self-Determination Theory. When cultures say they support autonomy but act controlling or claim to be safe communities but encourage individualistic competition, this violates a deep psychological need and can be interpreted as toxicity (Deci & Ryan, 1985).

It’s no wonder HR teams often face some of the highest rates of stress and burnout. It’s why they often move from company to company as teams; there’s safety in numbers.

The problem isn’t toxicity; the problem is (mis)alignment. To understand this more deeply, let’s look at how individual differences shape our perception of workplace experiences. If broken psychological contracts create disillusionment, what sustains meaningful work? It starts with understanding how individuals and organisations align or clash.

Alignment and Misalignment

We each experience and process the world differently. Psychologists call this subjective humanism, which emphasises the individual’s unique and personal interpretation of their experiences and reality. It focuses on the subjective meaning an individual gives to their world, rather than adhering to objective, universal truths.

This isn’t just philosophy. Research into Person-Organisation Fit consistently shows that alignment between personal and organisational values predicts engagement, performance, and retention, while misalignment predicts frustration, withdrawal, and attrition (Kristof, 1996).

How we experience the world is unique to each of us – including how we experience toxicity and environments that we might call toxic. The real challenge for organisations isn’t to be “non-toxic”. That’s a meaningless aim, given that we experience it differently.

A better approach is to be clear and honest about who they are, what they value, and how they operate. And then to actually live those values. If you run a company that prizes extreme competitiveness and 80-hour workweeks, be honest about it. If you champion flexibility and autonomy, show it through action, not just slogans.

(Note: There is a separate conversation about whether those cultures are appropriate for what your organisation is attempting to achieve. Does the culture encourage the behaviours that support your organisational strategy? With the X/Twitter example, Musk is walking his talk. The day-to-day experience is aligned with what the organisation claims is expected. However, it could be argued that this encourages behaviours that are individualistic and competitive, which reduce collaboration and innovation – two factors that are likely important in a tech company.)

This approach takes intentionality and awareness. It takes effort. Many of the incongruencies between those values and the reality are unintentional and innocent.

I recall an organisation having a strategic pillar focused on employee wellbeing. They’ve won awards for their initiatives and been recognised as a great place to work. However, their culture celebrates being available outside of core hours, wrapped up in a recognition value of being “Restless”. Their internal budgetary cycle means that redundancy announcements are made each year in October – often on World Mental Health Day. Those same redundancies are viewed as a running joke by employees: “See you survived the annual cull.”

None of this is planned holistically and intentionally. But its impact is far-reaching and can dissuade people from wanting to join or stay with the organisation.

We often say that a fish doesn’t know it lives in water. Culture is just how we do things here, and it can be practically invisible to those individuals within it. But the people on the banks of the pond can see what life in the water is really like, and they can determine whether it’s worth getting into the pond or finding a different one.

The clearer the signal, the easier it is for people to self-select. The stronger the match between personal values and organisational culture, the lower the perception of toxicity.

If the real problem is misalignment, not toxicity, the solution isn’t about making workplaces nicer – it’s about making them truer.

From Misalignment to Meaningful Cultures

Culture lives in the unspoken norms: what gets praised, punished or ignored. As social animals, our brains are constantly searching for cues from our environment and others around us to determine what’s safe, acceptable and allowed.

These norms are often subtle. But they are hugely influential. They’re what culture practitioners are trained to spot, identify and address. Like a medical doctor noticing the nuance between symptoms and the over-looked signs of a condition, culture experts identify patterns in these symptoms and bring clarity and purpose to the approach to address the route causes of those symptoms.

Purposeful organisational culture requires clarity. To create clarity, we need to intentionally surface those hidden norms and focus on what encourages behaviours that support the organisation’s goals and strategy.

That culture is created by everyone. It’s a myth that culture is created by the leadership – but leaders are incredibly influential in setting the tone for what is and isn’t acceptable. Leaders’ illuminate or cast shadows on our cultural panorama; as Edgar Schein pointed out, what leaders focus on gets culturally amplified (Schein, 1970). How they praise, punish or ignore carries more weight and sets the tone for what is acceptable.

More importantly, if what they praise, punish or ignore is misaligned with what our organisation claims are its values, this will translate those values into unintended languages. Those values must be more than posters; they must shape day-to-day behaviours and should be exemplified in the actions, decisions and approaches of our leaders.

For example, if you value collaboration, do your reward and recognition mechanics identify individual contribution or team results? If you value wellbeing, do you celebrate 100% attendance with a clap and a gift voucher, or do you offer a paid day off?

Leaders model our invisible rules – for better or for worse. If someone demonstrates a values-aligned behaviour, do we actively recognise (and reinforce) it, or do we ignore it because “that’s their job”?

Culture isn’t an asset you own. It’s a living contract between people. And like any relationship, it needs honesty, intention, and the willingness to adapt.

Conclusion

Elon Musk is often mocked for the intensity of working at X/Twitter. But at least he’s clear.

Many organisations aren’t. They talk about being people-first “families” – like Richard Branson or Anita Roddick – but behind closed doors, they reward the same behaviours Musk demands.

That gap between what’s said and what’s lived is where the real damage happens. It’s not toxicity; it’s betrayal.

It’s why I say I hate HR.

The talk is about development, safety, and growth. The walk is often about risk mitigation, policy enforcement, and fire-fighting. It’s why HR leaders are rarely seen as natural successors to CEOs – CTO or CFO is viewed as a more traditional move, despite every company claiming “our people are our greatest asset.”

Culture is not a nice-to-have. It’s the strategic engine that moves an organisation toward its goals — or stalls it. But it only works if the engine is built for the journey you’re actually making, not the one you say you’re making. You don’t get to slap a “wellbeing” sticker on the bumper and then celebrate people who never take time off. You don’t get to promise “collaboration” and then hand out bonuses for individual heroics.

As employers, we rent people from their families and communities. When we keep our promises, we return them stronger, more connected, more alive. When we break them, the damage ripples far beyond our quarterly reports – into classrooms, kitchens, and communities.

If we want to build meaningful workplaces, the answer isn’t about being nicer. It’s about being truer: Clear in what we stand for; honest in what we expect; and relentless in walking the talk.

Anything less isn’t just bad business. It’s bad humanity.

I don’t hate HR. I hate the betrayal of the promises we make – and the people we lose when we fail to keep them.

References

Business Insider (2022) Elon Musk told Twitter staff to expect 80-hour work weeks and fewer office perks. Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-staff-expect-80-hour-work-weeks-report-2022-11

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality. Journal of research in personality, 19(2), 109-134.

Festinger, L. (1957). Social comparison theory. Selective Exposure Theory, 16(401), 3.

Hülsheger, U. R., Lang, J. W., & Maier, G. W. (2010). Emotional labor, strain, and performance: Testing reciprocal relationships in a longitudinal panel study. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 15(4), 505–521. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021003

Kristof, A. L. (1996). Person‐organization fit: An integrative review of its conceptualizations, measurement, and implications. Personnel psychology, 49(1), 1-49.

Schein, E. H., & Schein, E. H. (1970). Organizational psychology (p. 59). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.