Culture – Quantifying the Real Value

by Alex Owens
Published on September 10, 2019

It used to be that culture was a task lumped into HR’s basket. A popular buzzword on career pages and a hot topic in job interviews, but outside of that, how seriously were businesses really investing in culture beyond Friday night drinks and a foosball table?

Flash forward to 2021, and almost 60% of young Americans value the quality of their work lives more than the financial payoff of their job. Makes sense considering that in the US, 89% of employers think that staff quit their jobs for more money, when in reality it’s the main driver for only 12% of people.

What employees want more than bigger bucks is a supportive, engaging environment to work in every day. One in which people can collaborate effortlessly with their colleagues, ideas flow freely, and everyone’s voice can be heard in a business no matter what their job title is. When it comes to building these work environments, collaborative work tools have a crucial part to play.

Take the recent findings from a comprehensive study into the Total Economic Impact of Workplace from Meta, conducted by Forrester Consulting. The study involved over 200 companies that have used Workplace for a number of years. As a direct result of using Workplace to connect all employees on one platform, and enable bottom-up communication and cross-team collaboration, these companies achieved:

  • 10% increase in employee retention
  • 32% increase in product innovation
  • 24% increase in onboarding efficiency

On average, these companies also reported a 3.9 x return on investment in Workplace over a 3 year period and $13.1 million in quantified benefits over 3 years. These tangible improvements across a number of business areas make a strong case for using collaborative, intuitive tools to build a more connected workforce.

If we dig a little deeper into that first statistic on employee retention – it’s estimated that employee turnover costs businesses in the US billions of dollars every year. The stats tell us that when employees quit their jobs, 75% do so because of their boss, not because of the job itself. It’s not possible – or fair – for the success of a company’s culture to rest on the shoulders of a handful of bosses. But having employees plugged into one connected platform where they can have conversations with other colleagues in the business makes employees part of a larger support network. Feeling connected and engaged with other colleagues is a valuable lifeline that may make employees less likely to walk away from a good job because of a bad boss.

The additional benefits of creating a more connected workforce are that it creates more opportunities for peer feedback and employee recognition, and allows people to have more meaningful conversations at work. All positive, culture-building activities.

Much to the HR team’s relief, bringing everyone onto the same page with collaborative work tools makes every employee a custodian of company culture. Forget the token foosball table, building closer communities at work is the way to foster a better culture.

 

Meet the Author
Alex Owens
Alex is our Experience Principal and team manager. A seasoned Business analyst and technical project manager, Alex works with the whole team to drive successful project delivery with the employee at the centre of the experience. Having launched Workplace to over 80,000 employees internationally, he loves facilitating complex cultural and communication change management. 

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