Your Number 1 Priority for 2024 Should be Culture

As a business leader, you’ve probably spent a lot of time planning for the New Year so you can provide your team with a roadmap to success. You’ve clarified your goals, the strategic plan to reach those goals, the tactics your employees will use, and the milestones that will benchmark your progress.

But wait! Is your company culture part of your annual plan? If not, it should be – and it should be at the very top!

After all, company culture is one of the principal factors in determining how productive a company will be and how much revenue it will generate.

How can your culture have that great of an impact on your business success? Company culture is directly correlated to employee engagement, so if your culture is strong, your people will be engaged, and they will show up each day with their sleeves rolled up, emotionally committed to achieving success. When your team is “all in,” you can achieve the measurable outcomes you’re looking for in 2024.

How to make time for priorities

Time is always the enemy, though. You may not think you have time to focus on things like your company culture when your attention needs to be squarely on things like

Performance
Recruitment
Employee Turnover
Customer Retention

Here’s the good news: When you focus on your culture, you will simultaneously improve the measurable outcomes you are working toward.

Here’s how:

Company Performance

A thriving company culture drives your employees to do their best work and exceed performance expectations. It also allows for increased innovation, greater agility, and decreased workplace conflict. As a result, a company with a strong culture generates five times – or 500% - more revenue, and they are 19% more likely to report higher profitability.

Recruitment

According to Glassdoor, 56% of candidates said company culture is more important to their level of satisfaction than their salaries.

A thriving culture acts as a magnetic force, attracting top-tier talent who want to align themselves with an organization that prioritizes its people, invests in their growth, and gives employees a strong sense of purpose.

This gives businesses a competitive advantage in the war for talent. Companies with a strong culture are targeted by 94% of job seekers!

Employee Turnover

A recent Gallup poll found that 75% of disengaged employees are either thinking about leaving or actively planning to leave within 12 months.

This is how companies get caught in the turnover death spiral. A struggling culture leads to employee turnover, which requires perpetual recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and training and greatly decreases morale.

On the other hand, companies with strong cultures have engaged employees who don’t want to leave. Only 7% of actively engaged employees said they were planning on leaving their jobs within 12 months—and nearly three-quarters (73%) plan to stay with their employer for two years or longer.

Customer Retention

There is also a strong connection between a thriving culture and customer retention and growth. Engaged employees are more likely to provide excellent customer service, boost the company’s brand and reputation, increase customer loyalty, and generate more referrals.

Conclusion

In short, engaged employees lead to engaged customers. Companies with strong engagement have 63% lower customer loss rates (Gallup).

It’s not too late to add a focus on culture to your annual plan and make the roadmap to business success a little easier (and more enjoyable). Imagine what it will be like when your people show up to work invested in that plan as much as you are!