The Buzz Around Company Culture: Is It Helping or Hurting?#

Alright, so Corporate America is really into “company culture” these days. But honestly? All those Friday drinks and team-building days might just be hiding a not-so-great trend. It’s something that’s actually making your workplace less fun and maybe even messing with your career.

Okay, when we talk about culture here, it’s like trying to build a specific vibe. You know, like the idea of the “entire Apple team” or going into a retail store where the “retail teams are together.” It’s pitched as putting “people at the center of our technology in a clean fast-paced friendly environment, a team full of people just like you.”

This whole “company culture” thing is a massive trend in managing businesses. Even smaller places, with as few as 20 employees, are bringing in culture managers. These are full-time folks whose whole job is just to push for a collaborative and positive work environment. Think about that: these are full-time people who, strictly from a business bottom-line view, don’t do anything except try to get the other 19 employees more “engaged” with their work.

The thinking is that culture is what makes people stick around. A survey by Robert Half, a workforce analytics firm, asked both job seekers and hiring managers about this. Get this: 91% of managers said a candidate’s fit with the organizational culture was more important than their skills and experience.

Funny side note: A PWC survey looked into company culture and found that 69% of companies actually believed their culture gave them a Competitive Edge. You’d guess the other 31% probably just figured an office could be perfectly nice without needing a ping pong table or kombucha on tap.

The Price Tag of “Culture”#

Running this corporate culture show costs a good bit of money. According to Glassdoor, corporate culture managers pull in an average salary package of one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year. And that’s just their direct pay. You also have to factor in the extra cost of putting on all those culture events and the lost time employees spend on “team building” instead of actual work. It’s a hefty investment, and honestly, the text says it’s not really paying off.

How do the folks actually working feel about it? Most workers say they only jump into workplace team activities because they feel like they had to. They’d much rather use their work time to focus on their job tasks and their time after work for family, friends, or just running errands. It’s like when someone from HR pops up and says, “Hey guys, we’re doing this fun activity from [time] to [time]!” and you had zero say, but you gotta go. Yeah, we can probably all agree that feels pretty terrible.

Even when the company paid for the activities, most workers apparently did not enjoy what they hilariously called “corporate prescribed mandatory fun.” An article in the Harvard Business Review even pointed out that these kinds of business vibes were a major reason why top-performing employees packed up and left.

So, with all this, you gotta ask: Why are companies still so fixated on their culture if it costs so much and just makes people want to quit? Well, the text says there are actually four main reasons, and honestly, they get a bit heavier as you go down the list.

Reason 1: More “Cult” Than Culture#

Okay, first up. Maybe companies aren’t actually trying to build a culture, but more like a company cult. Management, especially at big places, has figured out they can get an undue level of control over their employees if they can control how they think and act at work. Senior leaders will push the idea that the company is about something way bigger than just making money for its shareholders. The text quotes someone saying, “it’s a business of people serving people and it was is and always will be about the culture of the company.”

You see startups do this a lot with super enthusiastic founders convinced they’re changing the world. But that Harvard Business Review study mentioned earlier actually found that these cult-like behaviors were most common in the largest companies. The report specifically named Apple, Tesla, Nordstrom, and Harley Davidson as examples.

• Rituals: Doing things in a ritualistic way is a common sign of cults, and companies sometimes go too far with this. There are companies that really show off their culture, putting it right on their website. There’s even one place in town (not naming names) that will apparently pay employees two thousand dollars if they tattoo something related to the company culture on themselves. Yep, $2,000 for a company tattoo. Not a joke. And it is still required for Walmart employees across the country to do the company cheer once a day in all of their stores.

Speaking of Walmart’s cheer, the story goes that founder Sam Walton visited a Korean tennis ball factory back in 1975. They started each day with a company chant. Walton, who was apparently really into Asian business culture, loved this idea so much he made it mandatory everywhere. One thing that drew Walton to businesses in the East was how incredibly devoted employees were to their companies and the founders. The text mentions employees often putting in twice their salaried hours just to impress rigid corporate bosses. This was a trend that American business owners were apparently quite eager to copy.

While Sam Walton’s daily chant might just feel like a huge dose of awkward cringe, other companies push it further using another cult tactic: controlling language.

• Language Control: At Disney theme parks, new folks get a language guide when they start. The idea is that getting a job with the Walt Disney Company isn’t just a job, “it’s like entering a new community.” The text jokes that the speaker would be fired already because at Disney parks, there are no “employees,” only “cast members.” There are no “customers,” only “guests.” And when cast members are working, they aren’t “at work,” they are “on stage.” Apparently, cast members are reprimanded from going off script. Disney believes that controlling the words their staff uses will make them put in extra effort around the parks.

And Disney isn’t the only one doing this. Google employees call themselves “googlers” (unless they’re new, then they’re “nooglers”). Amazon staff are “amazonians.” And Facebook folks are “metamates.” On the surface, this might seem harmless, maybe even like good management. But the text argues it’s really just mental conditioning with an objective. The slightly scary part? It seems to work. You can probably think of unique jargon, terms, or acronyms just from your own company. Language and rituals are a big part of any culture, but in the corporate world, their aim is to get employees to think of the company and their job as something bigger than just a place they go to do tasks to earn money.

• The Payoff for Companies: For folks who do want to feel like they’re part of something bigger, a workforce that thinks the company is more important than the compensation that it provides will often accept lower salaries and remain more loyal than they would to a company that doesn’t pull the same tricks.

Google’s corporate culture is legendary for stuff like free salad bars and pushing creativity. But the text points out that’s only in place to get “googlers” to stay in the office longer and share their best ideas with a trillion-dollar company. The culture at Goldman Sachs is about being the “smartest, hardest working people” who expect to get paid more than anyone else because they’re “better.” But that culture also means new analysts often work 80 hours a week a month straight because, well, they know the culture they were signing up for.

If all this is starting to make “corporate culture” sound less like an annoying business buzzword and more like a horrifying trend, remember: this was just the first reason out of the four.

Before we dive into the next reasons, a quick break. This week’s “how money works” lesson (finding out why Corporate America loves culture so much) was sponsored by Incogni.

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Okay, back to the culture topic.

Reason 2: Managing Messy Workplace Issues & PR#

The second big reason companies are so into culture is that pushback over workplace issues has become a lot more serious. Offices have become a lot more diverse and inclusive, and public opinion has shifted to support groups that previously would have been marginalized. That’s definitely positive progress, but it does bring challenges.

When everyone in an office had pretty much the same background, it’s easier to avoid “faux pas” that will get the company in trouble. In a modern office, what one person sees as just a joke, another might feel is an attack. The text includes an audio clip example showing uncomfortable sexual harassment.

The “court of public opinion” is very unkind to companies, no matter how they try to handle these kinds of situations. Having a strong cultural framework is seen as a way to help reduce the chances of these events popping up.

Ultimately, the text argues that companies really only care about two things here: stopping bad PR and getting the most work out of the widest possible pool of talent. But saying that sounds a bit cold, right? So, they brand it as “corporate culture,” and supposedly, everybody is happy.

Plus, if problems do happen, a company that’s made a big deal about its corporate culture can also use it as a defense. Any corporate apology is bound to include a line about how the company “takes workplace culture very seriously” and holds its people to the “highest standards of whatever.”

Now, making a workplace where everybody feels comfortable isn’t a bad thing, even if it means being a little more rigid than, say, a 1950s “Mad Men” type ad firm. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s been done purely for the right reasons. The text suggests culture is only seen as “good” based on how much extra profit it can make for a company every year.

Reason 3: Just Following the Leader (and Bad Trends)#

The third reason for the culture craze? Everybody else is doing it, and they’ve somehow convinced each other it’s super important. Sure, “corporate culture” has been a concept in business management since the 1970s, but it has only become this big buzzword in the last 10 years.

The obsession really took off when traditional company leaders looked at the success of tech startups. These startups had a very different way of doing business but were becoming the most valuable businesses in the world. So, the push for “positive company culture” turned into basically just trying to copy what seemed to work for others. The original objective of actually making the best possible working environment got lost to following trends and fads that were implemented poorly.

The text mentions a current thing in Silicon Valley where people use this a lot: saying things like, “I like to hire people that I want to go have a beer with.” The speaker calls this a “really stupid reason to hire someone.”

• Open Plan Offices: Remember when office cubicles felt like the worst, most depressing workspace? Now, compared to some places, they look like heaven! Anyone who’s worked in a “culture-centric,” “collaboration-focused,” open plan office knows what that really means: you’ll be working shoulder-to-shoulder with your co-workers on a small desk barely big enough for all of your stuff. The speaker describes their own desk being incredibly close to their “poor neighbors,” needing headphones to concentrate, and finding that nobody ever talks. The text argues that the old office cubicles were actually better for workers. But moving to the conveniently cheaper option of cramming more staff into the same square footage can be justified by management with a focus on promoting company culture. The reality? Open offices are about saving money. Any extra space saved by getting rid of walls often gets used for “rec rooms” that look great on the company’s career landing page, but workers will get into trouble for using if they don’t meet their performance objectives.

• The “Work Hard, Play Hard” Myth: In the age of culture obsession, a team isn’t seen as a group of overworked people who drink heavily to cope with stress. Nope, they just “work hard play hard.”

• Employees Play Along: The text says employees are partly responsible for this obsession as well. One of the most frequently recommended interview questions for applicants is to ask about company culture. And since, as mentioned earlier, 91% of hiring managers rank a good cultural fit over the applicant with the best skills, this is technically good advice. But this also means the interviewers then need to have a good answer ready. If they said that they are a “boring company” that sets “reasonable expectation” for their workers and realizes that their accounting department is not a “fast-paced and dynamic environment,” it would put off a lot of LinkedIn enthusiasts. The best strategy for both workers and employers, the text suggests, is to play along with the game and pretend they care.

When Culture Goes Too Far: The Downsides#

Look, company culture can be good for everybody, but not if it goes too far. And the text says it can actually hurt company and career success in three specific ways:

• Creates Sameness: Even if individualism was the goal, strong culture can end up making everyone act and think the same. Sometimes, good ideas are had when not everybody feels 100% comfortable, and if everybody is too in line with the homogeneous culture, there won’t be anybody to challenge bad ideas.
• Isolates New People: Companies with strong cultures can also isolate new employees and make them feel very awkward. You know how you’ve probably talked to someone that was just a little bit too into their company and just love it, just love their job? Now imagine working with a whole team of them.
• Adds Excessive Pressure: Most of the stuff you do at your job does not matter. If you file a report late or enter some date wrong, it won’t be the end of the world. But if you and all the people you work with believe that the company is more important than just something that pays your bills, then every little mistake becomes the end of the world. This is terrible for the mental health of employees, but it’s also terrible for the company because it disincentivizes free thinking and controlled risk taking.

Reason 4: Motivating a Changing Workforce#

The fourth and final reason companies are so focused on corporate culture, according to the text, is because it’s one of the last options they have to motivate staff that just don’t care about the 40-year careers anymore. (The speaker mentions that to find out why, you can watch their video on how careers have changed forever).

And a special thank you again to Incogni for helping make it possible for everybody to keep on learning how money works.

The speaker finishes by sharing their personal take: You know, their value is if they had a company it’d be like, “Get this stuff done, and I don’t care what you do in the meantime, just like, you know, don’t be a dick.” The text says, “That’s it, that’s like, that’s all your company values need to [be].”