5 ways smart HR teams are dismantling toxic power structures at work

The following scenarios play out in almost every organisation: A senior leader who consistently takes credit for their team's work. A manager who controls information access to keep employees dependent. A high performer who violates the organisation's code of conduct but faces no consequences because they deliver results. 

This is a toxic power structure. It not only makes work unpleasant, but also drives out good employees, protects unpleasant behaviour, and makes the culture of the organisation more toxic.

If you are an HR professional/organisation leader who wants to root out this problem of toxic power structures, this blog from peopleHum is for you. Here are five ways to eradicate them from your organisation:

Flagging toxic structures before they become irreversible

Toxic power structures do not appear overnight. They build gradually, through small decisions that each seems reasonable in isolation: a manager who always controls the meeting agenda, a leader who decides who gets face time with the executive team, or a senior employee who determines which colleagues receive high-visibility projects.

Each of these, on its own, looks like normal organisational behaviour. Together, they form a structure in which one person controls resources, access, and opportunity that serve their own interests more than the organisation's.

Smart HR teams track these patterns before they become an irreversible part of the organisation’s culture. They monitor who or which teams consistently get big assignments and which teams or employees are overlooked, and whether those decisions correlate with performance or with proximity to a specific leader. They review whether access to senior leadership is distributed across the team or concentrated around a single self-appointed gatekeeper. They pay attention to which voices are consistently heard in key meetings and which are consistently absent.

HR teams can review performance records, promotion histories, project assignments, and development opportunities to flag patterns that individual managers cannot see. When HR makes these patterns visible, it removes the cover that toxic power structures depend on to persist.

Fixing the processes that breed toxic power structures

Toxic power thrives in ambiguity. For instance, when promotion criteria are vague, the person with the most influence decides who gets promoted. Or when project assignments are informal, the manager with the strongest network controls who gets the best opportunities. 

HR teams that notice this pattern understand that the most effective way to dismantle a toxic power structure is not to confront the individual exercising the power, but to remove the structural conditions that give them that power in the first place.

This involves making promotion criteria more specific, documented, and applied consistently across the organisation. HR teams must also create transparent processes for project and opportunity allocation, so that no single manager hoards all the big projects. 

HR teams must fix these processes at their root, rather than firefighting the consequences.

Creating safe channels for employees to report toxic power structures

The most dangerous feature of a toxic power structure is when employees who witness or experience abuse of power stay quiet because they believe that speaking up will lead to negative consequences for their careers. 

This requires HR teams to build safe channels of communication for employees to report what they are experiencing. For this process to work, employees need to trust this report mechanism. And to trust this report mechanism, employees need to see that it makes a real difference.  

The HR team can gather information through structured conversations between HR and employees without the manager acting as a mediator, anonymous pulse surveys designed to flag any informal power dynamics and skip-level conversations that give employees a channel to senior HR without going through the person they may need to report to.

HR teams must recognise that silence is not the absence of a problem, but a sign that one exists. 

Holding high performers accountable for behavioural violations

The high performer who behaves badly presents a significant dilemma for HR teams. Since they are delivering consistent results, the senior leadership is reluctant to take any drastic action.

This sends a signal to other employees that strong performance exempts them from behavioural standards. HR teams that recognise this issue early build and apply a consistent accountability framework that does not give any exception to high-performance. They document patterns of behaviour over time, building an evidence base that is not solely focused on the individual's results. They bring that evidence to leadership with a clear analysis of the organisational cost of continued tolerance: the rise in employee disengagement, the degrading culture, and the legal risk of its accumulation.

While this may not produce immediate outcomes that HR teams desire, it ensures that the silent structures within which toxic power thrives come to light and ensures that consequential decisions are made by those with the appropriate authority. 

Building a culture where authority is rightfully earned

Toxic power structures grow in cultures that confuse authority with status, that reward visibility over contribution, and that give informal hierarchy as much power as the formal one. To rectify this, HR teams must build cultures where influence is earned through genuine contribution and consistent behaviour, not accumulated through tenure, proximity to leadership, or the control of information and access.

This requires HR to develop leaders who model the right use of authority, such as sharing credit, distributing access, developing others, and using their position to create opportunity for others rather than hoarding it for themselves. It means designing recognition systems that flag contributions from across the organisation and measuring and rewarding collaborative behaviour.

Toxic power structures persist because organisations lack the systems to expose and dismantle them. HR's role in this work requires proactive pattern recognition, structural process design, and the institutional courage to hold high performers and senior leaders to the same behavioural standards as everyone else. 

When HR builds cultures where authority is earned through contribution rather than accumulated through informal control, the conditions that allow toxic power to flourish simply stop existing.

Key Takeaways

• Toxic power structures build gradually through patterns that each look reasonable in isolation. HR must track these patterns using existing data, identifying where access, opportunity, and influence are concentrated in ways that serve individuals rather than the organisation.
• Ambiguous processes give toxic power the conditions it needs to operate. HR must replace vague criteria and informal discretion with specific, transparent, and consistently applied frameworks for promotion, opportunity allocation, and performance assessment. Clear processes remove the structural cover that toxic power depends on.
• Silence is not the absence of a problem. It is often its clearest signal. HR must build reporting channels that employees genuinely trust, seek information actively rather than waiting for it, and enforce protection from retaliation as a practice rather than a promise.
• Tolerating bad behaviour from high performers sends a message to every employee in the organisation: the rules do not apply equally. Smart HR teams build and apply a consistent accountability framework that has no performance exemption, and they document the organisational cost of tolerance clearly enough that the decision to continue it cannot be made passively.
• Dismantling existing toxic power structures is necessary. Preventing new ones requires building a culture where influence is earned through genuine contribution. HR must work at the level of culture design, develop leaders who model the right use of authority, and be honest with senior leadership about the gap between the culture that is being described and the one that employees are actually experiencing.