As a return to in-person work faces continued scrutiny, workers’ relationships to the corporate office and the future of work have never been more uncertain. Many employees who have spent the past two years working remotely are reluctant to return to the office on a full-time basis, even as their employers offer in-person benefits. Instead, many employees hope to find a middle ground in which both salaried workers and hourly workers can retain the flexibility that virtual work affords without risking the cohesion of the company as a whole. 

If you’re still dealing with workplace toxicity in your company, it’s time to transform your company culture to eliminate it.

Every day, companies roll out employee engagement surveys and find themselves with some interesting insights. And every day, most of them don't know how to use those insights to truly improve performance and the employee experience. Clearly, change is needed-and there's not a moment to spare: a few years ago, employees started leaving their jobs in record numbers, and this trend shows no sign of abating. Any company that lacks a strategy for putting its employee engagement survey insights to work and a roadmap for operationalizing its culture is likely to keep losing employees.

For a long time, the business world was a buyers' market: there were lots of qualified candidates out there, and companies could be choosy about which ones to hire. In recent years, however, that has shifted to a sellers' market: companies are working hard to attract the attention of a small (and, in some fields, shrinking) pool of top talent. This trend predates the COVID-19 pandemic by at least a few years, but the global crisis accelerated some aspects of it. 

Researchers have found that companies with a more diverse workforce and leadership team are overall more profitable than their peers that lack such diversity.1 Many factors lead to this growth in revenue. Notably, today’s applicants want to work in strong company cultures that value people and how employees contribute to a company’s success. This interest drives top talent to companies with well-developed inclusive cultures and improves retention among current staff. An engaged workforce tends to be more productive—and higher productivity generally means higher profitability.