New research offers a data-driven playbook for building a great company culture

These days it seems almost impossible to strike the right balance between driving productivity and meeting employee expectations. Efficiency and agility are king, and leaders need to justify the value of every dollar spent. At the same time, people are the lifeblood of organisations, and they need the right conditions in place to do their best work.  

Nowhere is this balancing act more difficult than in the realm of organisational culture. So much of the research in this area tells employers to be mindful of culture in their day-to-day activities. But this advice can be challenging to translate into concrete action. When employers do invest in culture, it can be even more challenging to measure impact. This defiant murkiness has led many leaders to think of culture as a soft concern rather than something to be addressed as decisively as productivity, efficiency, or profitability.  

Companies in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For index outperform the market by a factor of 3.3x

Yet as much as some employers might want to sidestep concerns about culture, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that culture has a massive impact on a company’s bottom line. Businesses with strong cultures are five times more likely than their competitors to see a significant revenue increase. Companies in the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For index outperform the market by a factor of 3.3x. And companies with a high-trust culture have half the turnover rate of their competitors.  

To move forward, employers need clear evidence on which specific investments can help them attract and retain the best talent, inspire high performance, and increase agility and efficiency across the business. It’s with this critical gap in mind that we’ve created the 15th Annual Pulse of Talent: Calibrating culture in the age of agility. This report offers clear, actionable data on how well current culture investments are working, what’s at stake for companies, and (finally) an easy-to-follow list of data-driven actions to help move your company in the right direction.  

Read the full report 

Here’s a quick taste of what you’ll find in the report. 

The culture divide  

Simply put, our research found that leaders are right to be skeptical of their current investments in workplace culture. While executives and HR leaders give themselves high marks for how well they are managing their company culture, those perceptions aren’t shared by managers and workers.  

When asked if their company benefits were good or very good at meeting their needs, 72% of executives and 66% of HR leaders agreed, compared to only 49% of managers and 42% of workers. Similarly, more than eight out of ten executives felt they could see a career path at their organisation that aligned with their goals, compared to only four out of 10 workers.  

If companies’ efforts to improve culture aren’t being felt across the employee experience at all job levels, it significantly decreases any business benefit. And if current investments aren’t impacting culture as positively as leaders think, companies can become skeptical about investing.  

The staggering truth of Culture Promoters and Culture Detractors  

To get at the true drivers of great culture, we looked past job titles and asked ourselves, “What are the differences between people who love their company’s culture and those who aren’t so keen?” For this, we asked a question inspired by the net promoter score (NPS) commonly found in brand research and broke our respondents out into three groups – Culture Promoters, Culture Passives, and Culture Detractors.  

Here's a quick look at what we learned about the top and bottom groups. 

Culture Detractors  

Many leaders already know that Culture Detractors can have a detrimental impact on any company, bringing down engagement, morale, and productivity. But they might not know just how far a typical Detractor is from a Culture Promoter.  

Our research found that Culture Detractors are 6x less likely to say they feel connected to their employer or to their organisation’s mission. With that kind of ringing endorsement, you’d expect these folks to be a flight risk. But think again.  

Only one in five Detractors said they were looking elsewhere for a job. When asked why, they were 7x more likely (yes, you read that right) than Promoters to say they’ll stick with their current job due to a lack of other opportunities. This group is also only half as likely as Culture Promoters to say they have in-demand skills. When asked about their top priorities for staying in a role, Detractors were more likely to cite job security, while Promoters are more likely to cite growth-centered priorities, like opportunities for advancement or learning and development. 

Cutlure Detractors are 7x more likely to say they'll stick with their current job due to a lack of other opportunities

When you look at the results as a whole, a clear story emerges – when culture slips, it’s the highly engaged workers who will jump ship, leaving you with a growing group of Detractors.  

Now for the good news. 

Culture Promoters 

Our analysis of the Promoters showed that this group of employees is teeming with optimism and engagement. Companies need to recruit and foster more of these people if they hope to strike an optimal balance between productivity and employee expectations.  

Our study found that Culture Promoters are not only more optimistic and engaged than Detractors, but also much more aligned with their executives and HR leaders on vital company issues. Promoters are more than twice as likely as Detractors to think AI will have a positive impact on workplace culture (67% vs. 31%), much more likely to believe their leaders’ actions align with company values (87% vs. 24%), and a whopping 3.5x more likely to say they trust their employers and 3x more likely to say their employer trusts them. 

The urgency for companies to recruit and foster more Culture Promoters couldn’t be greater, but this urgency can only go so far without clear next steps. Employers need real evidence of what investments will attract, retain, and create more Culture Promoters among their ranks. Luckily, that’s exactly what the final section of our report set out to answer.  

Finally, a clear playbook for culture 

Unlike other reports on culture, ours offers a clear list of investments that will move companies in the right direction. This begins with making a prioritised list of technology investments that correlate directly with the experiences of Culture Promoters.  

For starters, Promoters were much more likely to say that their company offered them the tech they need to be efficient in their job (85% vs 39%). If you think this is too general, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.  

We then asked about a specific list of investments and found massive gaps between what companies were offering to Promoters and Detractors.  

Culture Promoters were much more likely than Culture Detractors to say their company offers: 
 

• A central place to get info about what's happening in the company (86% vs 45%) 
• A platform for self-guided onboarding (81% vs 28%) 
• An HR self-service tool (69% vs 28%) 
• AI-powered career recommendations (26% vs 6%) 
• A mobile app to manage routine work-related admin tasks (request time off, see earnings, check roster) (79% vs 47%)  

These are just a few of the many investments that were strongly correlated with Culture Promoters. You’ll want to read the full report to learn them all.  

Moving forward  

So, there you have it. A clear set of findings that reveals why culture is important, where current efforts are lagging, and an easy-to-follow list of investments that are correlated with a strong culture. And we’re not talking about small correlations here. We’re talking about huge gaps between Promoters, Detractors, and the investments that make the difference. For that reason, we invite you to read the full report to understand exactly what areas you should prioritise to move your organisation forward.