COVID Impact On Company Culture Is Mixed Yet Largely Unknown To CEOs

As the pandemic-era transformation of the workplace continues, corporate culture is consistently cited as mission critical. It’s a source of significant competitive advantage if it’s right, a leading cause of departures if it’s wrong, and a driver many CEOs use as rationale for wanting employees back in their offices as quickly as possible after extended remote work, in hopes of salvaging it. And yet, 4-in-10 CEOs report that they don’t know or are unsure about how their corporate culture has fared since the pandemic started. Unlike more well-established metrics like sales revenue or profit margin, for which most companies have finely tuned and automated targets and dashboards, company culture is an area where it’s less likely companies have the measurement protocols in place to know where things stand. Leading companies are investing in the tools and programs to bring together the art and science of culture measures to give CEOs and other executives the information needed to make decisions about this critical component of organizational success.