Dive Brief:

• Since the 2008 recession ended, highly skilled workers in fields such as technology, consulting and finance have seen employers going to great lengths to make employees happy. They have to in order to remain competitive, according to an article at the Boston Globe.
• Author Walter Frick, a senior associate editor at Harvard Business Review, writes that in a 2013 meta-study, Gallup found that work teams that scored in the highest quarter in employee engagement were 22% more profitable and 21% more productive than those in the lowest quarter.
• Frick noted that academic studies have shown the correlation between a strong culture and a company’s financial performance. Culture "helps team members communicate, keeps workers from leaving the company and it helps employees stay motivated and, as an extension, can even drive customer loyalty."

Dive Insight:

Frick wrote that no matter what the reasons for the obvious link between culture and business success, it's clear employees care deeply about culture and, as a result, so should employers. He also cited the Glassdoor study released earlier in 2015 that found that employees’ perception of a company’s culture and values was a better predictor of employee satisfaction than salary, benefits, career opportunity, or work-life balance.

Frick's view is that the trend should extend beyond highly needed knowledge workers into the ranks of lower paid employees as well. He writes that employers would actually benefit financially from treating workers better across the board, with perks such as profit sharing and stock options.

He does says "market-driven efforts" probably won't relieve all the pressures on most American workers. And, he added, while government-mandated paid family and sick leave would be a good start toward improving work for those not lucky enough to be in the sought-after talent pool, employers shouldn’t wait for legislation. "Improving the workplace culture is the right thing to do," he said, and doing so can help drive profitability.