Cliques seem to be a byproduct of this toxic environment. About 43 percent of the survey respondents said their office or workplace has cliques. About 17 percent of workers who consider themselves to be introverts are members of one of an office clique, compared with 27 percent of extroverts.

Think peer pressure ends at graduation? While only 11 percent said they felt intimidated by office cliques, 20 percent has done something they didn't want to do just to fit in with co-workers: 46 percent went to happy hours, 21 percent watched a TV show or movie to talk about at work, 19 percent made fun of someone else or pretended not to like them, 17 percent pretended to like certain food and 9 percent took smoke breaks.

Politics is a particular cause of stress, with 15 percent admitting to hiding their political affiliation to fit in. Another 10 percent hide the personal hobbies from coworkers and 9 percent don't reveal their religious/spiritual beliefs and affiliations.

And while some of this many seem harmless, 13 percent said the presence of office cliques has had a negative impact on their career progress.

The clique culture thrives in all types of businesses, including independent agencies, says agency management consultant Lisa Harrington. “It's a natural part of the human state for people to gather around others like themselves,” she said. Harrington has seen cliques form by personality type, department, layer of management, agency role, or tenure time. “There's a million ways those cliques start,” she said. “And it's inevitable. There's nothing a manager can do but accept that it will be part of the work culture and turn it to your advantage.”

However, in extreme cases, cliques can cause major harm to a business.

“I've seen cases where good employees have been lost because the atmosphere was so toxic in their department,” Harrington said. “You can also see the slowdown of work and lack of productivity that happens when time is being spent gathering as the clique.”

When this happens, management must intervene. However, it isn't always easy because unlike sexual harassment or racial or age discrimination, which deal with protected classes, members of a clique are there by choice.

Because one way cliques get started is in before-and-after situations, such as mergers or layoffs, management should keep workers informed and involved whenever possible. “When change happens, people take sides,” she said. If it's not possible to be completely transparent, at least keep employees regularly updated and informed to try and avoid the splintering that so frequently happens after change.

Of course, some things can't be tolerated: specifically, bullying and spreading lies or negative opinions about the company, especially to customers. “We fire gossipers; they're not a protected class,” Harrington said. “If you're negative or mean or rude, management must intervene.”

Management must also crack down hard on the ”covert disruption” of employees who are sneakier about subverting the business. “An 'us versus them' attitude about managers is common, but the adult thing to do is go to management with an issue instead of whispering behind their back,” she said.

And management can use the clique mentality to their advantage by encouraging positive social outlets: weekly department meetings, monthly meetings groups of departments, quarterly meetings for the whole organization where people can feel like part of the team. “Give them 15 minutes at the beginning of meeting for socialization; it's not a waste of time if you're running the meeting properly,” Harrington said.

Also, have some accountable projects with an overarching corporate responsibility that depend on interdepartmental cooperation. Something as simple as tasking employees to research buying a new set of copy machines allows them to meet new people from all over the organization and encourages engagement. Similarly, all-company social events such as holiday parties should never be undertaken by HR, but should be done by employees.

Finally, offices that have cliques with lots of time on their hands could be suffering from workflow issues, Harrington said. Sometimes negative employees are negative because they're stale in their jobs. Reshuffling work assignments can turn that around, and give employees a new appreciation of the challenges their coworkers are dealing with.