The employment relationship should in its essence be a mutually beneficial relationship, where the employee receives support, compensation, and benefits while the employer receives the employees behavior, time, and location.
However, as the employment relationship has an inherent power imbalance in place, it is easy for said relationship to slip into detrimental behavioral patterns, where codependency becomes an expected response from the employee.
Codependency as a culture
Usually when we talk about codependency, we’re talking about a single individual’s behavioral pattern. But codependency can also be pushed on individuals in the form of culture.
Please note: Codependency is not a personality disorder nor even a characteristic, but a behavioral pattern shown in response to a perceived detrimental stimuli.
As codependency centers on individuals who have little to no boundaries, have a difficulty saying no, seek to people please even to their own detriment, and often turn into sycophants, a codependent workplace culture is often something employers see as beneficial and actively work towards achieving and maintaining.
Good on paper, awful in practice
Having the most pliable workforce does sound good on paper, but codependency is a behavioral pattern that actively goes against the individual’s own well-being, resulting in psychological and even physical breakdown if the individual is subjected to it long enough.
Employees who are subjected to a culture that demands codependency will start showing issues that affect the individual as well as the employer directly, which can for example be:
- Lack of trust and/or respect for the employer.
- Anger towards the employer.
- No loyalty to the employer.
- No enthusiasm for their work, even when seemingly going above and beyond with amount of tasks and responsibilities.
- No entrepreneurship, or thinking outside the box.
- Reports of increased stress, even despite low or less responsibilities.
- Increased sickness.
- Burnout.
- High turnover.
- Negative connection with employer after leaving.
- Etc.
Overall approach needed to tackle the situation
Above mentioned issues are all issues related to the culture the employees are subjected to, and these issues cannot be rectified by supporting or empowering the individual. Engaging in self-care is necessary to prolong ones ability to handle detrimental situations, but no matter how much self-care an individual engages in the detrimental situation will wear them down eventually.
It is important for employers to realize how the responsibility lies with them, that a lot of the difficulties that the employer is facing from the employees is stemming from the employer’s chosen cultural approach.
Tackling a possible codependent workplace culture is therefore business critical for all employers.