Workplace Culture Statistics: The Facts

The Proven Impact of Workplace Culture: Boost Employee Engagement, Retention, and Productivity

Those feel-good workplaces are more than just temporary happiness. Intentional and protected environments have a direct effect on employee engagement, retention, productivity, loyalty, and profit. Thank goodness there’s finally research to back all that up. It’s been proven that a good workplace culture is directly connected to a sustainable business. Here are some workplace culture statistics to consider.

Take, for example, these findings:

Businesses with a strong learning culture enjoy employee engagement and retention rates around 30 to 50 percent higher than those that don’t (Robert Half).

When organizations have a thriving culture, employees rate their satisfaction with employee experience 102 percent higher (O. C. Tanner).

Thriving cultures with a positive employee experience are eight times more likely to have high incidences of great work, thirteen times more likely to have highly engaged employees, three times less likely to have layoffs, two times more likely to have an increase in revenue, three times less likely to have employees experiencing moderate to severe burnout, and seven times more likely to have employees innovating (O. C. Tanner).

Companies with strong cultures saw a fourfold increase in revenue growth (Forbes).

Being named a Best Place to Work is associated with a 0.75 percent stock jump (Glassdoor).

Seventy-seven percent of employees agree that a strong culture allows them to do their best work; 76 percent see the impact in—and another 74 percent draw a correlation between—culture and their ability to serve their customer base (Eagle Hill).

When organizational culture isn’t working, neither is your business. Check out these workplace culture statistics:

Toxic workplace cultures have driven 20 percent of US employees out of their jobs in the past five years, at a turnover cost greater than $223 billion (SHRM).

Poor workplace cultures lead to a 157 percent increase in the incidence rate of moderate to severe burnout (O. C. Tanner).

An estimated 120,000 deaths and $190 billion in healthcare spending per year are attributed to employee burnout (O. C. Tanner).

Companies with moderate-to-severe burnout have a 376 percent decrease in the odds of having highly engaged employees, an 87 percent decrease in the likelihood of employees staying, and a 22 percent decrease in work output (O. C. Tanner).

Employees who say that they very often or always experience burnout at work are 63 percent more likely to take a sick day, 23 percent more likely to visit the emergency room, 2.6 times as likely to leave their current employer, and 13 percent less confident in their performance (O. C. Tanner).

Disengaged employees can cost companies up to $550 billion a year (O. C. Tanner).

Toxic environments, therefore, represent more than just temporary pain.

Ongoing exposure to negative people and places has the opposite effect of feel-good environments. Your company’s employee engagement, retention, productivity, loyalty, and profit are proven to suffer. And the part that’s so tough is that you can build a really intentional and positive environment for years and then one toxic person can make the whole thing come crashing down.

The expression that “one bad apple spoils the bunch” is, unfortunately, true without the appropriate communication, boundaries, trust, and respect to properly manage the person’s impact. But it is very possible to recover from a breakdown in your workplace culture when you know where, how, and why it happened and when you have your values to guide you back to a place of authentic alignment.

We live in a time that can now measure, quantify, and build a powerful case for why workplace culture matters. And it’s so incredible how much we’ve evolved as a society and a human race. We now realize that we can and should do better for our people.

Are you a conscious leader looking to create a thriving workplace culture?