How can CEOs convert culture into performance

We often hear that culture is a key driver of business success, but the challenge for many leaders is moving beyond a gut feeling. How do you go from a conversation about culture to a tangible conversation about revenue and profit? The answer lies in listening to your people, but connecting those insights with your financial and performance data.

Connecting your cultural data to your financial and performance data

In our work at The Happiness Index, we’ve found that the most insightful conversations happen when you connect your people data to your financial data. This isn’t about proving a direct causation with a single number, but rather about uncovering correlations and trends.

For example, a number of studies, including research published in the Harvard Business Review, have shown a clear link between employee happiness and business performance. In his book “The Happiness Advantage,” author Shawn Achor details how a positive mindset improves nearly every business outcome, including productivity, creativity, and sales. If we know this, why are we still keeping our culture insights separate from our financial reports?

The key is to ask the right questions. We have moved beyond simply asking, “Are our employees happy?” The next step is to ask a more meaningful set of questions that get to the heart of the matter:

• Is employee engagement impacting our customer service scores?
• How much more money do customer-facing staff generate after they’ve completed a particular training course?
• Does staff retention have a direct impact on our bottom line?
• How much money is a toxic culture costing us?
• How could our culture drive our share price?

Build a financial model to track it

Once you start seeing these connections, you can build a simple financial model to track the impact of your cultural initiatives. This doesn’t need to be overly complex. It could be as simple as an internal dashboard that displays relevant employee feedback scores alongside key performance indicators like:

• Employee retention rates: What is the cost of attrition, and how does it change when people are happier at work?
• Customer satisfaction scores: Are your happiest teams creating your happiest customers?
• Revenue per employee: How does a rise in happiness correlate with an increase in team productivity?

This model helps you make more informed decisions. It allows you to move away from making sweeping statements and instead lets you ask, “What evidence do we have that this change to our culture is having a positive impact on our finances?”

Making a start

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for building a thriving culture, but there is data and insight that can help guide us all. The goal isn’t to create a perfect company with happy employees all the time. It’s about making sure your organisation is a place where people can thrive.

If you’re ready to stop just saying that your people are your greatest asset and start proving it, our culture consultants can help you build the models and ask the right questions to get you started.