HR Insights
January 30, 2025

What if building a strong culture is about retaining the right people?

Employers around the world want to improve their company’s culture. Our latest global research shows that growth-oriented retention might be the best way to do it. 

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Employers around the world want to improve their company’s culture. Our latest global research shows that growth-oriented retention might be the best way to do it.
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When employers talk about culture and retention in the same sentence, it’s usually to say that a stronger culture will help boost overall retention. But what if the opposite is also true? What if a strong workplace culture is just as much the outcome of retaining the right people?  

That’s a key question we wanted to answer in the 15th Annual Pulse of Talent: Calibrating culture in the age of agility global report. To better understand what makes a workplace culture strong, we went straight to the source – people – and looked at what separated employees who loved their culture most from those who loved it least.  

We asked all our 9,489 respondents around the world a single question:  

Thinking only about your employer’s culture, how likely are you to recommend your current employer to your family and friends as a potential employer?  

Based on the answer, we separated our respondents into Culture Promoters, Culture Passives, and Culture Detractors. Then we looked at how each group might impact their employers. 

Detractor risks and Promoter benefits  

The results showed stark differences between Culture Detractors and Culture Promoters, not only in terms of mindset, but the potential impact each group can have on culture and performance.  

Compared to people who identified as Culture Promoters, Culture Detractors were: 
 

  • 5.8x less likely to say they feel connected to their organization’s mission 
  • 5.7x less likely to say they’re proud of where they work 
  • 3.5x less likely to say they trust their employer 
  • 3.1x less likely to say their employer trusts them 

Promoters, on the other hand, were: 
 

  • 3.6x more likely to believe their leaders’ actions align with company values  
  • 2.3x more likely to say they’re paid fairly for the work they do 
  • 2.2x more likely to think AI will have a positive impact on company culture  
  • 1.8x more likely to say they have in-demand skills 

Employers looking at these results can clearly see the benefits of having more Culture Promoters and fewer Culture Detractors among their ranks. But here's the thing - only one in five Detractors we surveyed said they were looking elsewhere for a job. That means employers need to be very targeted in their talent strategies if they want to retain more Culture Promoters and fewer Culture Detractors among their ranks. 

The question is: How? 

The secret lies in growth.  

Growth: The Culture Promoter magnet  

Put simply, Culture Promoters’ main reasons for staying in their current role were associated with what Carol Dweck called a “growth mindset” in her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. A growth mindset is a learner’s belief that their intelligence and resilience can expand and develop. When people have a growth mindset, they’re more likely to challenge themselves and believe they can achieve more and become stronger, better creative problem solvers. That’s in contrast to a fixed mindset, which is a learner’s belief that their intelligence and resilience are unchangeable.  

When we asked employees why they were committed to staying in their current job, Culture Promoters were three times more likely than Detractors to say, “Opportunities for growth.” Culture Detractors, on the other hand, were 1.7x more likely to say, “Job security” and a staggering seven times more likely to say, “Lack of available job opportunities.”  

In other words, Promoters stayed for growth and Detractors stayed because they felt stuck.  

We saw more of the same when we looked at employees who were searching for a new role. When asked why they were looking, Culture Promoters were more likely to say, “Want to change career path” (38% vs. 24%) while Detractors were twice as likely to say, “Don’t have job security.” This isn’t to say that job security is a bad thing. Rather, the results show that new retention efforts focused on employees’ growth and career opportunities might help companies retain more Culture Promoters to boost culture and performance across the board.  

What to do 

Now that we know the potential benefits of growth-oriented retention strategies, what should employers do about it? To learn more, we asked Culture Promoters and Culture Detractors about the benefits and resources offered by their employers. We then identified which were most strongly correlated with each group.  

Based on the numbers, here are three of the top growth-oriented retention tactics to build the type of culture that’s correlated with Culture Promoters.  

AI-powered career recommendations 

Culture Promoters need to envision a clear future at your company to feel engaged and stick around. Curating personalised career opportunities at scale would have seemed impossibly labour-intensive only a few years ago. But AI has completely changed the game here, offering the technology to help automate matching employees with opportunities based on a host of factors like skills, experience, interests, performance, and goals.  

AI-powered career recommendations were only available to 17% of respondents in our study. But among those, the impact was clear. Culture Promoters were over four times more likely to report having access to this resource compared to Culture Detractors. Employers looking to build a stronger workplace culture and boost performance can’t ignore findings like this and will need to further explore how AI-enhanced career recommendations can help them build a stronger culture.  

Abundance of on-the-job learning and promotion 

Culture Promoters were much more likely to report having access to a host of on-the-job opportunities that distanced their companies from those of Culture Detractors. Within a given year, Promoters were more likely to be offered: 
 

  • A job rotation program (45% vs 16%) 
  • Job shadowing (49% vs 17%) 
  • Ability to move into a new role (45% vs 16%) 
  • Promotions (45% vs 16%) 

As with personalised career recommendations, many companies might struggle to offer these kinds of opportunities at scale. Great HCM technology makes it easier to match candidates to the right roles based on their skills, interests and experiences. It also empowers employees interested in new roles through scalable succession planning and performance management, all while keeping HR and managers in the loop for key decisions.  

Personalised learning opportunities  

Since career exploration was such a powerful retention tactic for Culture Promoters, it’s little surprise that this theme of personalisation at scale showed an equally positive impact in the realm of workplace learning. Many respondents reported having access to traditional on-the-job learning opportunities, but Culture Promoters were over three times more likely to report having “Personalised learning opportunities.” They were equally more likely to have “A defined learning plan that aligns with my career” and “Learning opportunities that match my learning style.”  

As with the previous two retention tactics, it’s this combination of tech-enhanced personalisation at scale and growth-oriented professional development that most strongly separated Culture Promoters and their pacesetting companies from the rest of the pack.  

Moving forward  

Culture Promoters bring a wealth of benefits to their employers, while Culture Detractors pose many risks. While it’s true Culture Promoters can be fostered through strong management practices and the right investments, it’s worth considering that many of these employees might also bring a ready-made growth mindset to the workplace. In that case, companies should focus on offering personalised growth opportunities and the tech to support them, helping retain more of their top performers as they strengthen their culture overall. 

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