June 18, 2025

In the early 1990s, New York City transformed its approach to crime prevention by focusing on something seemingly trivial: broken windows.

The theory, developed by criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling, suggests that visible signs of disorder and neglect in a neighbourhood encourage further antisocial behaviour. Fix the broken windows, clean up the graffiti, and more serious crimes begin to decline.

This principle has profound implications beyond urban planning. In the workplace, the same psychological mechanisms are at play every day, influencing how employees interact with their environment and each other.

Understanding and applying the broken window theory can therefore be the difference between a thriving workplace culture and one that gradually deteriorates.

When small problems become big issues

The workplace equivalent of a broken window could be an unwashed coffee cup left on a meeting room table, boxes of equipment stored in what should be a collaborative space, or a printer left jammed for days. These might seem like minor inconveniences, but they signal something more significant to everyone who encounters them.

When employees see these small signs of neglect, they unconsciously receive the message that standards don’t matter. The meeting room with boxes becomes an unofficial storage area. The kitchen with unwashed crockery accumulates more dirty dishes. The untidy desk area spreads to neighbouring workstations. Before long, what started as isolated incidents become an accepted norm.

This deterioration doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s remarkably predictable. One person’s lowered standards give permission for others to follow suit. The collective environment begins to reflect a culture where attention to detail and mutual respect take a backseat to convenience and individual priorities.

The contagion effect of workplace behaviour

Behaviour truly does breed behaviour in office environments. When someone leaves a shared space in pristine condition, the next person is more likely to maintain that standard. Conversely, when they encounter a space that’s already dishevelled, they feel less guilty about adding to the disorder.

This psychological phenomenon extends beyond physical spaces to broader workplace behaviours. Late arrivals to meetings become more acceptable when others consistently show up unprepared. Quality standards slip when shortcuts become visible and apparently tolerated.

The challenge is that this decline often happens gradually, making it difficult to pinpoint when things started to go wrong – by the time the problems become obvious, they have often become entrenched in the culture.

Prevention through proactive maintenance

We have observed this dynamic repeatedly across the corporate environments we manage, and our approach centres on prevention rather than remediation.

For example, our floor captains begin each day by ensuring workspaces are reset to their optimal state – chairs pushed under tables, meeting rooms cleared and ready, any overnight accumulation of disorder addressed before employees arrive.

This sets the psychological tone for the day. When employees arrive to find their workplace looking fresh, organised and cared for, they’re more likely to maintain those standards throughout the day.

The key insight is that it’s far easier to maintain high standards than to restore them once they’ve declined. Like the broken windows in New York’s neighbourhoods, workplace disorder is much simpler to prevent than to reverse.

Building positive workplace habits

Creating and maintaining high workplace standards requires both systematic approaches and individual accountability.

Start by identifying the most visible shared spaces – reception areas, kitchens, meeting rooms – and ensure these are maintained to exemplary standards throughout the day.

Establish clear ownership for different areas, be it through dedicated facilities staff or rotating responsibilities among team members. Someone needs to be watching for the first signs of decline and addressing them immediately, just as New York’s approach targeted minor infractions to prevent major ones.

Implement simple daily reset routines that restore spaces to their intended function. This might mean clearing meeting rooms between sessions, ensuring kitchens are clean at the end of each day, or having designated areas for temporary storage that don’t interfere with primary workspace functions.

Most importantly, recognise that maintaining workplace standards is everyone’s responsibility. When leaders model the behaviour they want to see, such as tidying up after themselves, respecting shared spaces and addressing small issues before they escalate, they create permission for others to do the same.

The broken window theory reminds us that in workplaces, as in neighbourhoods, small things matter enormously.