OOO: Your crappy culture is fueling turnover

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Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, recently appeared on Theo Von’s podcast for an interview. As Craigslist grew to require employees, Newmark recounted how he knew he wasn’t a good manager, so he delegated that responsibility to someone else. Instead, he decided to work as a high-level sales rep, something he was good at. That sort of humility is, frankly, uncommon. 🤯

Many leaders are great at what they do…and many aren’t. When an organization is stuck with the latter, they often end up with an entire company culture that has been tainted by poor leadership. That’s why 71% of U.S. workers said they have or would turn down a job opportunity because of bad company culture, and 51% have quit for the same reasons, according to a recent survey from Dayforce.

The reality is that your crappy culture is fueling turnover. Emmi Buck, communications and public relations professional, has experienced this firsthand.

“It started out as a great experience at first. The main thing that changed was we lost our ‘protectors,’” said Buck about a job she had which she ultimately left because of what she deemed “terrible” company culture.

Buck’s PR department lost their director, who she said created a bubble of great culture within a broader organization with inhumane practices. Eventually, Buck herself moved up to fill their spot.

“What I experienced firsthand when I stepped into the director role was the way they would speak about employees behind their back,” said Buck. “There was a younger employee who was very thoughtful in how she spoke. They asked me, ‘Did she have a stroke at some point, or does she have a mental handicap?’ She's an amazing employee. The fact that you're questioning someone's mental capacity in that manner was just so icky.”

“I found a secret Slack channel that they didn't realize wasn't locked down,” Buck added. “The CEO, president and person in charge of HR were talking about people's pay and end-of-year raises. They were bringing up things that weren't related to their job for reasons why they weren't going to give them raises.”

All of this might be enough to push someone over the edge, but Buck said the atrocities continued. Originally a department of 20, the PR team fell to 3 by the time of Buck’s resignation. The higher-ups weren’t hiring turnover replacements because the remaining overworked employees were, by the skin of their teeth, still completing the work — not necessarily to the best of their ability, and sometimes in no less than 60 hours per week, but completing it nonetheless.

Is the problem…you?

Retaining talent is key to a company’s growth. Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, chief people officer of Dayforce, wrote in an email, “Our research shows that organizations that invest in culture – specifically, aligning their benefits, initiatives and technology with the needs of their people – will have an advantage when attracting and retaining top talent and building a high-performing workforce.”

For Buck, simply slapping on BetterHelp benefits wasn’t enough. “That’s this teeny, tiny Band-Aid on this massive problem that they've created,” she said. “The culture starts at the top.” If executives are directing people to take time for their mental health, but touting the so-called work family as the reason why you should be working on the weekends, “that doesn't mean anything,” she added. While 84% of executives think they’re improving company culture, often through these types of avenues, only half of their employees agree, cites Dayforce.

Buck’s former job was remote. Zach Wright knows something about managing remote workforces. As CEO of Grapevine, a software for remote offices, he sees a major problem with isolated employees and disconnected teams. “The solution is centralization,” said Wright, “where information, communication and engagement all occur in the same place.” This means getting to know colleagues on a personal level “beyond the squares” of Zoom and Teams, and breaking down technological and procedural silos between departments.

Beyond software solutions like Wright’s, the solution to crappy company culture — for the sake of your organization’s growth, but also just being a fucking good person — may boil down to stepping outside of yourself and letting someone else decide a better path forward, if only for the time being. I’m not a Swiftie, but I also don’t live under a rock, and I think one of her lyrics works well here: It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

Maybe in that time, you go to a silent meditation retreat (Buck said she’s heard of that working). Or maybe you just go on a walk. Whatever you do, make sure all of your workers have a voice and someone willing to listen to it.

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