According to a 2023 Gallup survey, only 23% of employees worldwide feel actively engaged at work. The rest are either going through the motions or — worse — actively undermining their organisations. The culprit, in most cases, is not pay. It is culture.

Workplace culture encompasses everything from how managers communicate to whether employees feel psychologically safe enough to challenge ideas without fear of retaliation. In organisations with strong, inclusive cultures, people take initiative, share information freely, and hold themselves accountable. In toxic environments, they do the opposite — covering mistakes, competing rather than collaborating, and eventually leaving.

The business case for culture is compelling. Companies with high employee engagement outperform their competitors by 23% in profitability, according to Gallup. Retention rates are dramatically higher: employees who feel their values align with their organisation's are far less likely to resign. During the so-called Great Resignation of 2021-2022, the companies that lost the most talent were not necessarily the lowest payers — they were the ones with the most dysfunctional cultures.

Transparency and accountability sit at the heart of any healthy workplace. When leadership communicates honestly — including about bad news — trust builds. When people are held accountable fairly, without scapegoating or political games, the entire organisation becomes more effective.

The challenge for leaders is that culture cannot be engineered overnight. It is built through thousands of small decisions: how a manager responds to a mistake, whether a meeting includes everyone's voice, how conflicts are resolved. The organisations that get this right do not just attract talent. They keep it.