Human resources is often described as the custodian of organisational culture. The department expected to protect values, drive engagement, and keep workplaces healthy. But there is a part of the job we talk about in hushed tones, if at all. Managing leaders. Especially toxic ones.
Most toxic workplace cultures are not created by employees. They are created, enabled, or tolerated by leadership. HR often sees these patterns early. The quiet exits of high performers. The whispered warnings from employees who are scared to be named.
New policies on wellbeing, ethics, learning or inclusion that fail not because they are poorly designed, but because senior leaders do not model or support them.
Engagement surveys that reveal pockets of dysfunction tied to specific teams. Grievance cases point to the same names. Yet acting on this information is rarely straightforward.
The structural challenge is that HR’s effectiveness is deeply tied to leadership support. Budgets, strategic influence, and even performance evaluations often depend on the very leaders whose conduct needs to be questioned.
In some organisations, holding a senior leader accountable can feel like a career-limiting move for HR professionals. This creates a dangerous conflict of interest, where silence is rewarded and intervention is punished.
The result is a cycle where toxic behaviour is managed rather than addressed. Employees are coached on resilience instead of leaders being coached on conduct. Transfers are offered instead of consequences.
HR is left cleaning up the damage while the root cause remains intact. High turnover, disengagement, reputational damage, and legal risk are absorbed quietly by the organisation, while individual leaders continue to advance.
Breaking this cycle requires a shift in how accountability is designed. Leadership behaviour must be measured with the same seriousness as financial performance. Accountability must be structural, not personal. Culture cannot rely on HR being brave in private conversations.
Expectations must be baked into leadership scorecards, performance reviews, and incentive structures. If people leadership is measured, visible, and tied to consequences, behaviour changes.
The second step is shifting from opinions to evidence. Toxicity becomes easier to dismiss when it sounds emotional or anecdotal. It becomes harder to ignore when it shows up in data.
Patterns of turnover, absenteeism, engagement scores, and grievance reports can no longer be dismissed as soft issues. When linked to financial and operational outcomes, they become business risks that boards and executives cannot ignore.
Thirdly, HR needs allies beyond management. HR cannot be the sole referee in cases involving powerful leaders. Independent reporting channels, ethics committees, employee councils and board-level oversight provide the structural backing HR needs to act with credibility and fairness. Without this, accountability becomes selective and trust erodes.
Transparency also matters. While confidentiality is necessary, opacity is not. Employees pay close attention to whether leaders are held to the same standards they enforce.
HR often tries to protect the organisation from discomfort by handling issues quietly. But silence can look like complicity. Clear processes for investigations, consequences, and follow through build trust, even when outcomes are unpopular.
The writer is a senior HR consultant and founder of Jobonics HR.
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