Shawnee Love   •  
March 17, 2016

The research is in. You can be the nicest boss, have fun parties and fully equip a games room, but if you don’t pay people what they are worth or treat them unfairly, you will not have a culture which people want to work in.  Moreover, your people will be disengaged because people measure how much you value them in the rewards and pay they receive.  According to research I have seen, a disengaged employee costs you $3,400 in lost productivity for every $10,000 you spend!

I am going to let that sink in.

Spend $10K on an employee and $3.4K was wasted if the employee isn’t engaged.

If you have a poor company culture and one of the reasons why it is so bad is because you pay less than market rates for each person and your workers feel undervalued, you may eventually come to realize that you are getting your money’s worth.

Take pay and rewards off the table as a demotivator by ensuring you are paying fairly and you create the right conditions for a good culture as well.

In the Okanagan of BC, there is a concept called the sunshine tax. The premise of the sunshine tax as it was explained to me is that the Okanagan is a desireable place to live, so people who live here are willing to work for less just to be here.  I have actually heard some employers discussing this “tax” positively and praising it as a solution for the poor work ethic amongst workers in the Okanagan who often are in holiday mode from April to September.  I have spoken out against the sunshine tax for more than 10 years, partially because I know if you want to attract top talent to your organization, you have to pay them competitively or they won’t leave their current situation.  I also know that if you don’t reward them competitively, they won’t

• Be engaged and productive,
• Speak positively about your business, and
• Recognize and contribute to a good culture.

And the reason why you should care is because, according to John Spence (author of 4 books, speaker and executive consultant), your customer’s experience will never exceed your employee’s experience.

Striving for a great organizational culture is certainly the moral thing to do, but the bottom line is

Good culture is good for your bottom line and thus, worth investing it.