Methodological approaches to the toxic potential assessment of the corporate staff

Abstract

The article presents the intermediate results of a monitoring survey of labor relations transformation in the context of social pollution from economic activities of businesses. One of the system-forming factors of social pollution of the internal organizational environment is the presence of both senior and ordinary toxic employees in the personnel, who by their actions or inaction have a negative impact on the well-being of subordinates and/or colleagues, and cause damage to the organization as a whole. The urgency of the problem has led to the need to study the nature of the phenomenon of toxic personnel of the organization, search for methods for identifying and evaluating the toxic potential of employees. The collection of empirical data analyzed in the article was carried out using the author's methodology, which includes a combination of methods of narrative interview and sociological survey. The employees looking for a new job and having applied to a recruitment agency were involved into the study as respondents. Respondents were interviewed as candidates for vacant positions, and were asked to answer, among other things, questions related to negative work experience with toxic managers and/or colleagues in their current/previous workplace. Additionally, at the end of the conversation, respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire. Eighty respondents (42 men and 38 women) participated in the study. The analysis of the results of the empirical study allows the authors to identify gender differences in the perception of toxic managers and colleagues by employees, to determine advantages and disadvantages of the methodological approach proposed by the authors and directions for improving the evaluation tools.