Here’s what you need to frame HR’s impact on business performance and financial results.
When I talk to HR and business leaders, they know they have to change how they approach culture with their senior leadership.
Here’s a common question:
“I know our organization needs to dig deeper into employee experience and culture. I know it is having a negative impact on the business. How do I get senior leadership on board?”
My answer is simple: Don’t start the conversation with culture. Start with business performance.
That might sound counterintuitive coming from an HR veteran, but it’s one of the biggest lessons I have learned over 27 years. Senior leaders care about people, but they ignore the employee experience because it’s framed as an HR initiative instead of a lever for business performance.
If the conversation starts with, “We need to improve employee engagement,” many executives will hear, “HR wants to run another survey.” If the conversation starts with, “We are struggling with alignment, accountability, and execution, and we need to understand whether the employee experience is helping or hurting those outcomes,” now you are speaking the language of the business.
HR’s most common mistake
The biggest mistake I see HR and culture leaders make is failing to connect to business outcomes that matter to leaders.
They talk about culture, employee engagement, and survey scores. The C-suite, however, is asking a different set of questions:
- Why are we not hitting our goals?
- Why is execution inconsistent?
- Why are teams not aligned?
- Why are managers not driving accountability?
- Why are we moving too slowly?
That’s where you need to start the conversation.
Great Place To Work® data proves the connection between trust and performance. High-trust companies like the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® have triple the stock market returns and high-trust leadership unlocks growth and small and medium-sized businesses.
How to connect culture to business challenges
Early in my career, I worked in retail and our company was struggling to hit performance goals. The leadership team kept pushing more sales spiffs and incentives, assuming that if people had more financial motivation, performance would improve.
When sales didn’t improve, they had to ask, “What are we missing?” We conducted focus groups, where we learned that compensation was not the root issue. What employees were really telling us was, “Leadership doesn't care about us, they only care about how we perform.”
Another spiff, bonus, or incentive wasn't going to solve that problem. They weren't asking for a bigger reward; they were asking for evidence that they mattered as people, not just as producers of results.
Those focus groups were a turning point. What leaders thought was a sales performance issue was actually a trust issue — and that lack of trust was showing up everywhere: turnover, absenteeism, productivity, customer experience, engagement, and sales performance.
How to get leaders to change
Imagine an organization that is missing customer commitments and struggling to execute key initiatives. The executive team asks for more accountability: more reporting, more status meetings, more dashboards.
What should the company do? The first step is to get data. Start with employee survey data because it gives you the fullest picture of the lived experience of your workforce. Then connect that data to business and demographic data.
That’s where you find real insight, by getting curious about the gaps you find in the data. Which groups are having a different experience? Which leaders or locations are creating stronger outcomes? How does that connect to turnover, productivity, sales, safety, customer experience, quality, or execution?
This is how employee experience becomes a business conversation, by diagnosing the root cause of low performance.
Addressing your CEO’s doubts
Most leaders know that culture is important, but they don’t want to prioritize it over the things that will get them fired: missing revenue targets or disappointing shareholders.
When I get the question “Why should I prioritize this now?” my answer is direct. If you want to hit those revenue targets, you are going to need your people. If you don’t have trust, it’s going to be really tough.
This is what every champion sports team knows: Talent and tactics aren’t enough to win. Championship teams have trust, alignment, accountability, leadership, and execution. They know their roles and they trust one another. They are willing to sacrifice for the larger goal.
Organizations are no different. A company can have incredibly talented people and still underperform if those people are not aligned, do not trust leadership, and do not feel supported.
HR leaders must stop trying to convince leaders to care about “soft” issues. The bigger opportunity is to show them how culture already affecting the hard issues they care about the most: revenue, customer satisfaction, and stock market performance.
That’s how great workplaces are built.
Get recognized for your culture
Gain accolades for your workplace environment and attract top talent who share your values.
