What Makes It A Toxic and Abusive Employment Relationship:

The idea that employment is a relationship between two parties—who each bring something to the table—is both common and strangely overlooked. If you search “employment as a relationship” on Google, most of the results are about legal stuff, contracts, and online forums. Based on that, it seems like the relationship is all about rules and paperwork. What’s missing is guidance on how to manage the relationship itself—how to work well together and build something lasting that works for both sides.

Power and control

In a workplace, the employer naturally has a lot of control over how things run.

As long as they’re being fair, reasonable, and following the law, they’re allowed to decide how and when work gets done. The laws generally allow them to set schedules, hire or fire people, promoting or demoting staff, and handling the day-to-day operations. They also get to choose how much they’ll pay and what kind of experience or skills they expect from new hires.

Employment standards laws also give them power to decide on things like dress codes, vacation timing, sick pay, how a job ends, and more. That is a lot of power for one entity who has entered into a relationship with another.

What happens if the person who is administering these powers isn't someone who knows how to use power in healthy ways? What about people who don't understand that these relationships can be collaborative, and want to dictate every tiny thing their staff do?

This site exists because this relationship that so many rely on has the potential for great abuse.