It’s common knowledge in Silicon Valley that Uber has a hyper aggressive and masculine company culture, but no one spoke up because of how much money the company made. It likely left hundreds of companies wondering if they would have the same success by copying it.
As revelations continue to pour in about Uber and other companies, such as Signet Jewelers — lawsuits, drops in valuation, and firings and resignations of high-profile staff — we’re now left second-guessing the idea that a hyper-aggressive culture is conducive to success after all.
It turns out that the culture of a business plays a major role in whether the business succeeds or not — for better or worse.
How to measure business success
This leaves me asking the question of how the leadership of a company measures success. Sales and ROI are typical ways to do this. It’s not my intent to pick on Uber specifically, but I feel that the issues the company faces should leave other leaders asking just how healthy their culture is.
This question is an important one for leaders to ask. Healthy company cultures multiply the growth of companies and makes the company more resilient to the general ups and downs of business life, along with more problematic crises.
I feel that workplace culture needs to be measured, much like ROI and sales. I believe that the health and culture of an organization should be considered on the same level as sales figures when it comes to measuring success.
These aren’t baseless opinions either. Plenty of studies have backed up the notion that a healthy organization — one where the employees enjoy their work and feel valued — outperform companies with employees that feel the need to be competitive and that they are replaceable.
Great company cultures lead to growth
A great example of this is Costco. Many people are aware how thriving the workplace culture of Costco is, but there’s more to it than that; it’s growing at an unprecedented rate. If you were to have invested in Costco just 20 years ago, you would be enjoying a 1,200 percent ROI by now; double the 600 percent return you could expect from a Nasdaq company. This would be on top of giving your money and support to a public company that never shies away or apologies for supporting employees.
You may counter that argument by saying that Costco is a massive public company. Perhaps your own small company that isn’t public is looking to grow and hit sales and user metrics. In reality, even for organizations focused solely on growth, having a great company culture will lead to growth. It’s likely to lead to even greater growth in the future, making it doubly important.
It is the duty of the leadership team to put aside the time and effort to improving and maintaining the health of the organization. A healthy organization is a growing one. Fostering a healthy culture will always pay off too, whether you’re employing 5 people or 5,000 people.
Culture is more than just foosball and vending machines
A culture is the shared attitudes, beliefs, and values of a company; manifested through behavior and actions. Culture is something that you feel by walking through the office. A company culture can be bad if it is founded on unethical attitudes, toxic beliefs, and poor values. This means that it is possible for morale to be low even if the culture is strong. Culture can create morale, as long as the culture is shaped, brought to life, and lived by every employee in a company.
An unhealthy organization will typically have poor morale — which leads to high rates of turnover and low retention rates. Morale has also been linked to the ability a company has to find, attract, and keep the best talent on the market. Job seekers and workers care more about company culture than ever before; using platforms such as Glassdoor to aid them in their decision to stay in the company they already work for — or find somewhere new to work.
A positive and thriving workplace culture isn’t just created. It takes more than giving the employees vending machines and foosball tables. It takes time to create a culture. It’s something that must be worked on constantly, much like other metrics of success. What’s the point in giving your employees a fun and relaxing activity if they are too afraid to use them?
There are some companies that believe you can’t measure how healthy an organization is. There is some good news in that regard; it’s now possible to measure the culture of an organization using pretty reliable methods. One of the common trends is using eNPS scores to objectively measure culture, and working to improve the culture through feedback from employees.
Prioritizing the culture of the organization and the happiness of employees is something that has to start at the top to have any chance of succeeding. The leadership team should be the ones driving the values of the company, and setting and recognizing good examples. They should be the first ones to address and correct issues that come up.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.