Why Every Day is Halloween in Workplaces with Low Morale

It’s Halloween today, and if your office is like many here in New York City you’ve made sure to fill the workplace with cobwebs, pumpkins and other themed decorations. Depending on your company’s policies, staff may also be wearing costumes as well, to an acceptable degree.

You may think that Halloween only comes once a year, but actually, it’s much more than that. In fact, in companies with low employee morale, Halloween is every single day.

Simply put, workplaces with morale issues are full of people in costume. Not literally, of course (unless you consider business attire a “costume,” which is your perogative); what I mean here is that in offices where morale is low – for any reason, be it recent layoffs, salary cuts, physical space downgrade or what have you – people arrive at work not as their true selves, but as avatars of themselves.

Comedian Chris Rock has a good bit on this as it relates to dating, essentially that we don’t send our true selves out on a first date, but rather our “representatives” – the idealized version of what we think the other person wants us to be. In workplaces with low morale, where tensions are high and staff is fearful of losing their jobs, employees are doing the same thing: being who they think you, the boss, want them to be.

As a manager, one could argue that it doesn’t matter which personality your employees put on before showing up to work, so long as the work is getting done – and there is no doubt truth in that position. However, putting on an act to please the boss – be it to avoid scrutiny, fake interest in the work or misrepresent the status of projects, for the sake of keeping one’s job – not only takes its toll after a while, but it serves to fuel employees’ true feelings of bitterness, resentment and burnout they are more likely experiencing. Not a pretty situation for them, and not an accurate perception of the true state of the workforce for you.

And thus, employees in toxic workplaces are perpetually in costume: wearing masks to hide their real emotions, conceal their personalities and obscure their actual states of being. This is certainly not the kind of work environment which fosters high productivity, quality results and healthy interactions with managers, colleagues or clients.

Your employees may be wearing scary costumes today – however, it’s the costumes they wear tomorrow which should keep you up at night.