Retain Your Best Employees By Intentionally Managing Culture

December 27, 2017

This is an excerpt from our ebook collaboration with BambooHR “Managing Employee Turnover.” Download the full guide here.

Turnover is a symptom, not the condition. As such, a focus on turnover alone and a simple assumption that low turnover means that all is well won’t serve your organization. What’s a better bet?

Focus on Culture

In their classic 1992 book, Corporate Culture and Performance, John P. Kotter and James L. Heskett revealed these surprising statistics for firms reviewed over a period of 11 years:

culture

Simply put: Companies that intentionally manage their cultures significantly outperform those that don’t.

Why?

Culture, or the company “personality,” touches everything about an organization, including procedures, communications, decision-making processes, who gets hired, who gets fired, who gets promoted, who gets developed, how and how much employees are compensated, how conflict is handled, the quality of leadership, the quality of the organization’s goods or services and how employees relate to each other and customers (whew!).

Culture touches everything about an organization, including who gets hired, fired and promoted.

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Energy spent on the creation of a healthy corporate culture is always energy well spent. All too often, however, leaders spend energy on more superficial activities that don’t come anywhere close to addressing what’s really eating at employees.

For example, an annual “Employee Appreciation Party” (even one that pulls out all the stops) won’t do much to convince staff of their value to the organization if performance reviews and wage increases are routinely postponed. Regardless of what other responsibilities managers may be juggling, an organization that perpetually tolerates egregiously late evaluations sends a very clear and damaging message about priorities, because employees know the organization will always find time for what executive leadership truly deems important.

Want the step-by-step on managing employee turnover? Grab your copy of “Managing Employee Turnover” today!