Have you ever hesitated to share information because you’re worried a colleague might use it to get ahead? Or walked into a team meeting already bracing yourself for workplace politics? If these sound familiar, you’re not alone.
What exactly is PvP?
Originally a gaming term describing direct competition between players, PvP has taken on a new meaning at work. In the workplace, PvP describes a dynamic where employees focus on outperforming one another instead of working towards shared goals.
Dr Tracie Lazaroo, psychologist at Inner Light Psychological Services, explains: “PvP culture forms when competition becomes the default relationship style at work. In these situations, people begin to focus on outperforming colleagues rather than contributing to shared goals. Over time, the culture becomes less about collective success and more about individual survival or one-upmanship.”
In other words, the mindset becomes: “I need to win, or I’ll lose.”
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With that in mind, we wanted to understand: How many workers actually experience PvP behaviours at work? To find out, we ran a poll on WSG’s Jobs & Career Advice Telegram.
What we asked in the poll
Participants responded to four key questions:
- Have you experienced colleagues competing against you instead of collaborating with you?
- How common is PvP in your workplace?
- What will you do if PvP happens to you?
- What will you do when you see PvP happening to others?
First, we asked respondents about their own PvP experiences to get an overview of the landscape.
Poll #1
Shocking — 65% experience direct competition. This means PvP isn’t rare. And for many, it’s already part of daily work life. Meanwhile, 19% see it happening to others, 10% don’t recall observing such behaviour, and only 6% find their workplace highly collaborative.
While competition can be healthy, the shift from motivation to mistrust creates a culture that quietly turns toxic: work starts to feel more like PvP than people working together towards a shared goal.
Next, we wanted to understand how prevalent PvP culture is across Singapore workplaces. Here’s what we found.
Poll #2
Oops. A total of 84% have seen PvP happening around them — and when asked whether it was part of normal workplace culture, 36% said it feels like the norm, while 48% said it depends on the team.
This tells us that PvP isn’t happening in isolated incidents. It’s becoming part of workplace culture. In contrast, only 10% hardly see PvP and just 6% report good workplace collaboration.
Why and how PvP shows up at work
According to workplace culture experts at Great Place To Work Singapore, PvP environments are typically shaped by systemic gaps in trust, fairness, and clarity. Three factors that commonly fuel PvP in workplaces include:
- Low trust in leadership: Opaque decisions, unevenly applied policies, or tolerated political manoeuvring can cause employees to compete for visibility or recognition.
- Siloed structures and limited resources: Teams begin to hoard information, develop an “us” versus “them” mindset, and chase credit when they feel like they’re fighting for budget or headcount.
- Weak psychological safety: If speaking up or making mistakes leads to consequences, people stop collaborating and start wanting to protect themselves instead.
And nope, PvP doesn’t always happen like in the movies through dramatic sabotage. Sometimes, it shows up through subtle and quiet interpersonal behaviours that often fly under the radar. Common signs include:
- Information hoarding
- Credit-taking or blame-shifting
- Belittling or invalidating someone’s work and undermining their credibility
- Giving misleading instructions, passive-aggressive comments, or sarcastic remarks
- Holding side conversations where decisions are made informally
- Dominating meetings with status games, posturing, or performative updates
In workplaces where these behaviours go unchallenged, PvP doesn’t just exist. It becomes normalised.
The psychological toll of PvP
Long-term exposure to PvP doesn’t just affect performance, but wellbeing too. Dr Tracie notes that employees often become anxious or hypervigilant, constantly anticipating criticism or conflict.
The tension from the workday carries into personal time, making it hard to unwind. Collaboration begins to feel risky, mistakes feel dangerous, and workers may feel like they are being judged or outperformed.
Over time, this chronic strain can lead to emotional exhaustion and even burnout. At an organisational level, Great Place To Work highlights further consequences: reduced innovation, decreased willingness to collaborate, fractured trust, and weakened culture equity — especially among underrepresented talent with limited access to informal power networks.
When PvP happens to you or others — what do people actually do?
Let’s look at what participants said when PvP hits close to home.
Poll #3
This is where many people feel stuck. 26% would rather quietly quit than address the issue while 25% simply don’t know what to do.
22% would turn to a senior or mentor for advice, 17% would speak directly to the colleague, and just 10% would escalate the matter to a manager or HR.
To wrap up the poll, we flipped the question and asked about their actions when witnessing PvP.
Poll #4
A total of 75% stayed on the sidelines — 25% would quietly support the affected colleague, 25% would stay out of it, and 25% were unsure what to do.
This hesitation makes sense, since speaking up can feel risky. But it also highlights how PvP thrives in environments without psychological safety. In contrast, 13% said they would mediate, while 12% would raise the issue upwards.
How individuals, teams, and companies can handle PvP
Tips for individuals
According to Dr Tracie, individuals can take several concrete actions:
- Strengthen psychological boundaries: Pause and resist the urge to react emotionally when tension arises and anchor yourself in facts rather than assumptions.
- Seek clarity: Approach situations with curiosity, instead of assuming hostile intent.
- Document interactions simply and factually: This helps maintain perspective and provides a clear record if the issue repeats or escalates. And if patterns start emerging or persisting, which in turn affects your ability to work, sound the alarm.
- Escalate concerns in a calm, structured, and professional manner: Frame them around team impact and workflow, not personalities.
Tips for the work fam
Peers have enormous influence, and teams can also help actively reduce PvP by establishing shared norms, such as:
- Practising shared decision-making: This avoids side decisions and information imbalances.
- Adopting a blame-free and problem-solving environment: This allows everyone to remove and reduce defensiveness and focus instead on finding solutions.
- Having each other’s backs: Redirect credit and help quieter colleagues have a voice during discussions.
- Addressing PvP behaviours privately and respectfully: This is a good way to reset boundaries while keeping matters professional, and it allows you to bring in a mediator, if necessary, into the conversation without calling out the issue publicly.
Tips for companies
Solving PvP isn’t about telling people to “be nicer.” Great Place To Work recommends shifting the game from PvP to PvE, Player vs Environment, and for leaders to:
- Align goals and incentives to shared outcomes
- Make decisions and performance criteria transparent
- Demonstrate respect and care by building psychological safety
- Empower leaders and people managers to name and dismantle corrosive behaviour
- Recognise collaborations, share results, and co-create action plans publicly
Work shouldn’t feel like a battlefield
Work isn’t Game of Thrones — no throne, no crown, and certainly no dragons are needed. It should be a place where people can do meaningful work together, and grow and succeed in their careers.
As Great Place To Work notes, high-trust environments are those where credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie are observed. It’s where information flows openly, psychological safety exists, people challenge ideas — not each other, collaboration is rewarded, and where ambition doesn’t harm fellow colleagues.
And because PvP thrives in silence, naming the behaviour is the first step to challenging and combating this toxic work culture.
If you’re experiencing PvP or see it happening, don’t freeze or stay silent. Take the steps outlined in the article to seek support and protect yourself.
If you’re an employer or a leader, don’t ignore this toxic behaviour. Spot and stop PvP before it becomes the norm in your workplace, or your company’s culture and productivity will pay the price.
