What Is a Hostile Work Environment? Spot the Warning Signs

On average, there are 2,087 work hours per calendar year.

That’s a lot of time spent at work, and these hours feel even longer if you spend them feeling uncomfortable or being the victim of unsettling behavior. When this is the case, it may be because you find yourself spending those hours in a hostile work environment.

People often confuse a hostile work environment with working in a less-than-ideal workplace. While yes, having a boss who always seems to be in a bad mood, dealing with a rude coworker, or experiencing a lack of teamwork isn’t exactly optimal, it doesn’t mean the work environment classifies as hostile. For a workplace to be hostile, it needs to meet specific legal criteria.

Additionally, the behavior, communication, or actions have to be discriminatory in nature to qualify as hostility. Filing a hostile work environment claim is classified as a workplace discrimination claim under federal law.

So, what behaviors are considered criteria for a hostile work environment? An individual who files a claim must prove they were discriminated against based on:

• Race
• Color
• Gender
• Sexual orientation
• National origin
• Age
• Religion
• Ancestry
• Disability
• Pregnancy

The actions within the claim have been severe enough to be considered abuse. It’s important for the HR department to log and securely store any instances that may be considered hostile into HR case management software so they can be tracked and used to potentially terminate the harasser.

How to spot a hostile work environment

As stated, while a coworker who chews their food loudly or a manager who leans over your desk to talk to you can be rude or obnoxious, it’s not legally considered a hostile working environment. The EEOC states “petty slights, annoyances, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious)” are not considered illegal.

But a coworker who makes sexually explicit jokes on your behalf or a manager who refuses to listen to you because of your gender would constitute as hostile. 

If a boss, manager, or coworker is berating team members about their age, religion, race, or gender, they’re guilty of creating a hostile working environment for others. It doesn’t matter if these types of comments are said casually, with a smile, or played off as a joke, it doesn’t excuse the situation and still falls under the definition of hostility in the workplace.

Another important factor to consider is that a single incident of this behavior or misconduct will likely create a hostile situation for an individual, but not necessarily a hostile environment. While hostile behavior needs to be disruptive of an individual's work performance, it also has to be severe, pervasive, and persistent.

To reiterate, if an employee tells HR their manager speaks with a booming, serious tone to the team, this might be considered an annoyance, but wouldn’t constitute hostility. Conversely, if an employee approaches HR to say their boss has made numerous sexist comments to them in their meeting, this is hostile. Nevertheless, if an organization is striving for exceptional company culture, eliminating smaller issues, rude behavior, and bullying in the workplace should be a high priority for any employer. 

How to deal with a hostile work environment

As an HR professional, it’s imperative you understand and can spot the warning signs associated with a hostile work environment. More often than not, the matters related to such conduct will fall at HR’s doorstep. 

Understanding what qualifies is a significant part of HR’s job, especially if an employee is threatening to file an EEOC complaint. Once you have a clear understanding of how your organization can avoid these types of lawsuits, the first step in addressing inappropriate and hostile behavior in an abusive working environment is use dispute resolution tactics and ask the individual to stop immediately, whether the victim or the HR professional is doing the asking.

If this individual is unwilling to change and the behavior persists, the situation can be escalated to their manager or supervisor. When this isn’t enough, the human resource department needs to be bold enough to fire employees who threaten other employees at work, even if this individual is a top performer or otherwise exceptional in their field. 

Of course, this is more difficult if the hostile individual is the CEO or a C-suite executive. Regardless, it’s up to HR to talk to them, make a case, and persuade them with performance data, turnover rates, and associated costs. 

It’s considered best practice to update the company handbook with a clear and concise policy on handling hostile situations and behaviors. It should define what constitutes hostile behavior, harassment, discrimination, and any unwelcome conduct, and the disciplinary actions for anyone engaging in this behavior. Additionally, make it known in the policy what employees can do and who they should turn to if they’re the victim of this hostility. 

Laws regarding a hostile work environment

A company’s number one priority should be protecting employees from experiencing harassing behavior. Because there are so many types of harassment, there are laws to protect the rights of the employees to always have safe working conditions.

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act: Within this act, there is language stating no employer should “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual concerning compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of an individual's race, color, sex, or national origin.”  
• Age Discrimination in Employment Act: This federal law doesn’t allow discrimination against workers aged 40 years or older. It is unlawful for employers to refuse a person employment solely based on their age.
• Americans with Disabilities Act: This act forbids employees from discriminating against employees or individuals applying for a job at their organization with disabilities and ensures people with disabilities are provided the same employment opportunities. It also protects employees with disabilities from retaliation when they impose these rights.

Real-life examples of a hostile working environment

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to experience a hostile working environment as they can be prevalent across industries. We talked to five business professionals who’ve experienced such conditions to learn more about what they dealt with.

"His volatile and sexist actions made employees uncomfortable."

“At a previous agency, there was a hostile work environment that primarily stemmed from one executive. The rest of the executive team allowed his misbehavior and explained it as it's just him being him.

This executive was on his second wife and would constantly deal with personal matters over the phone in the middle of the open office. He would yell at or belittle his wife at times, and when he got off the call, he would make sure everyone knew that he hated women as a whole. 

Other times, this executive would joke around that he needed help finding his third wife, and he'd take any help he could get. One day I was in a car with him after going out to lunch. He slowed down when passing a group of high school girls and asked me if I was trying to 'get some of that young action'.

This executive's behavior directly led to more than 10 people leaving the agency. His volatile and sexist actions made employees uncomfortable coming into work until they had enough.

After organized documentation was presented to HR and the CEO of this executive's misactions over time, he was demoted, stripped of direct reports, and mostly held a role outside the office. It was finally recognized that his actions created a hostile environment.

In addition to this hostile behavior, he also made truly terrible comments about the pregnant women on our team. We had three women pregnant on one team at one time, and he would repeatedly say they needed to figure out their schedules on when to get pregnant next time because they were 'ruining the company'.

On top of that, this executive would frequently say racist remarks. In one example, he interviewed a Muslim woman with a hijab and afterward he told people he doesn't trust women who cover their heads because they must have something to hide. On another occasion, the day we had a new hire starting, before she came in, he exclaimed, ‘where is she from? Puerto Rico? I better brush up on my Mexican speaking’.”

- Anonymous source

"Three women have to say the same thing as a man to be considered."

“A supervisor of mine has what I called the ‘gender conversion rate,’ which means he needs about three women to say the same thing as one man to be considered with equal weight or importance. At one point, we had three women on the team, so we’d all work together to purposely throw our weight behind each other to get projects done.

But one of us got moved to another team in a reshuffle and quit soon after that happened, and things deteriorated from there. The second woman I worked with quit just a couple of months ago. Thankfully, I just gave notice a couple of weeks ago myself.

All three of us tried to approach him about his behavior at various points, but when you don’t listen to women in the first place, I think it’s not going to be a woman who convinces him there’s a problem.

Over the last few months, it has become obvious that he doesn’t view my work as requiring any kind of special knowledge or skill, which was the final straw for me.”

- Anonymous source

"I had to minimize myself to survive in my role."

“Working in sports, there's a common knowledge that being a woman means you're being held to vastly different standards than your male counterparts. I used to work for a hockey team, and part of my role was to record athletes' post-game interviews in the locker room. On multiple occasions, I was stopped and questioned about my intentions of being in that area by security, even with my credential in full display. My male colleagues had no similar experiences with stadium staff.

The worst offender of fostering gender-biased rules was the NFL team I used to work for. As a woman, you were warned not to look or talk to players and coaches directly. If a player ever said hello to me or asked me a question, I would nod and keep walking for fear that someone would see and make judgments about me.

My female colleges were limited on access to practice fields or weight rooms to conduct interviews or capture content for their jobs. Women were told not to wear certain clothes on the field or sidelines because it was ‘distracting for players’. These guidelines never applied to any men on the team. 

The biggest thing I struggled with was having to minimize myself to survive in my role. I always questioned how I approached things, what I said or asked, and how I carried myself.”

- Anonymous source

"This manager would verbally abuse me in our 1:1s."

When I worked in financial services, I had built a solid reputation for myself: strategic, friendly, kind, creative, trustworthy – someone with grit and vision. I had garnered this reputation for myself after building the marketing strategy from the ground up for a division within the company while being publicly bullied and ostracized by the men in this division. 

That reputation crumbled around me in 2020, when I got a new manager who placed me on a new team without training, expectation-setting, or support. This manager would often verbally abuse me in 1:1s where there were no witnesses, telling me I was rude, disrespectful, rigid and inflexible, and a bitch.

She told me I had an attitude problem when I tried to defend myself and pointed out that if I was doing so poorly, she needed to develop an actionable plan as my manager to get me unstuck from poor performance. When I asked if we could talk about how she was coming off, she responded, ‘Absolutely not - I am YOUR manager.’

This was all happening during the pandemic. I became extremely depressed and hopeless, wondering if I actually was a horrible person who deserved these terrible things to be happening. I began doubting myself and my ability. 

On the advice of an external mentor, I went to HR and told them what was happening. No action was taken. I tried interviewing for a different internal role. Although the initial interview went well,  it never went anywhere because I later learned my manager blocked the move. A few weeks later, HR showed up on a call with my manager unannounced letting me know that I was officially on a performance improvement plan despite the long list of successful projects and launches I had under my belt.

Thank God that same day I received an offer from another company. However, just five days after my last day, I contracted an autoimmune disease that I will have to live with for the rest of my life because of the stress I experienced and the hostility I encountered in this job.

In addition to this constant verbal abuse, I also experienced sexism within this organization by my male coworkers. An example would be when I tried implementing deadlines for receiving material from a particular team, and followed up twice communicating that to ensure that worked for everyone on an all-male team. When no one answered, it was recommended to me that I take this silence as ‘yes’. 

One day, when a male coworker sent me something after the deadline, and I told him that I couldn't publish his content when he wanted me to based on the deadline communicated, his response was to blow up at me over email, saying things like I wasn't a team player, that I'm being unreasonable, and that he doesn't expect me as a woman in this particular sector of financial services to be able to understand the importance of his work.

Just in case this wasn’t enough, I frequently experienced yelling in person where men condescended me as one of two women in the department about how marketing should be and was always excluded from after-hours drinking events that all the men went to.

- Anonymous source

"We were all white, so we wouldn't be offended."

“Several years ago, I was at a team-building, company-sponsored event. It had been a really fun day, and I felt more connected with my teammates than I ever had before. Towards the end of the day, we were sitting around telling stories and joking and one coworker said, ‘I have a funny joke, but it’s a little racist…’ 

One of my other coworkers responded that they’d love to hear the joke, looked around the group and said, ‘It’s okay, you can tell it. We’re all… cool’. It became clear to me that the connotation of cool really meant that we’re all white and won’t be offended.

Immediately I told the group that there was no way I wanted to hear the joke. Another coworker spoke up and also said they didn’t want to hear it, and looked visibly angry that it would even be suggested. This finally shut down the conversation. 

Unfortunately, I knew the first coworker well enough to know that this joke was going to be more than a little racist and it was actually going to be heavy with misunderstanding and negative sentiment towards a group of people they knew little about. It was not the first time this coworker would make such a comment and it wasn’t the last, either.”

- Anonymous source

Put a stop to hostility

Your employees' safety, security, and well-being should be at the very top of your priority list. A hostile work environment is highly detrimental and can directly impact someone’s physical and mental health. The HR team must know the warning signs, red flags, and necessary disciplinary measures to instill a positive and welcoming workplace for all employees.

To ensure all of your employees feel safe to be their authentic selves at work, make sure you implement a non-biased dress code policy, too.