What do Ted Lasso, Southwest Airlines, and that one Chick-fil-A drive-thru employee who somehow knows my wife’s name have in common?
They all prove that culture beats strategy every single time.
When I first started my law firm, I will be honest…I thought the “culture stuff” was fluff. I had no interest in free coffee, slides from one floor to another, a pool table (and no money to buy those things things anyway)
I thought the real ROI (return on investment) was in billable hours, marketing funnels, and shiny software. But then I noticed something…
When my receptionist felt respected, she took the extra minute to calm clients down and talked up the next person they were speaking with.
When my paralegal felt supported, she caught mistakes or deadlines that would’ve cost us thousands.
And when I finally stopped treating “culture” like an afterthought, turnover went down, productivity went up, and my stress dropped faster than the box office returns for Elio.
That’s when I realized: office culture is the invisible profit center no one puts on the balance sheet. AND it’s the most fun!
So What’s the Hidden ROI?
1. Retention:
Replacing a good employee can cost 1–2x their salary. Building a culture where people want to stay is like putting compound interest on loyalty. This is sort of like the old Richard Branson line of I would rather train people and have them leave, then not train them and have them stay…only for keeping great people.
2. Referrals:
Happy employees talk. Clients hear it. Potential hires hear it. It becomes a magnet. (Think less Office Space printer-smashing rage, more “I actually like Mondays.”) Seriously, my right hand employee was a referral from a former employee because I was a lot nicer than their prior boss…and now she’s creating her own digital products for us like our Hiring Process SOP.
3. Resilience:
Culture is what keeps your team steady when things go sideways. Bad culture? Everyone bails when things get tough. Good culture? They rally like in the Fellowship of the Ring. And you don’t even need to be precious yourself (when the culture is).
4. FUN:
I cannot stress this enough. A great culture is also FUN. Read Delivering Happiness about Zappos and hear Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) talk about how much he hated the culture at the first company he created and wanted to make sure not to repeat those mistakes at Zappos (later sold to Amazon for 1.2 BILLION).
Let’s be honest, you know the days when you dread going into the office, and your employees have the same days. A pizza party here, a genuine concern there, can make ALL the difference (and you get to eat pizza too)
But Here’s the Catch
You can’t fake culture. Put a ping pong table in the break-room and call it “fun,” and everyone will see through it. It needs to be aligned with your company’s core values and true component of what y’all do day to day.
Culture isn’t perks — it’s how people feel about showing up every day.
Want the ROI? Start small:
- Say thank you.
- Ask for ideas.
- Celebrate wins (even the weird ones, like “had a 5 minute conversation with client X without yelling a single curse word afterwards”).
Books and consultants will give you 57 frameworks for culture, but at the end of the day, it comes down to this: are people better off because they work with you? I hope they are, and if they are…you and the company will be better for it too. To make sure this happens, next week we are going to share our employee evaluation newsletter for the specific questions to ask them quarterly to make this growth happen (while you do the culture thing).
Bonus Idea – we do an icebreaker every Monday at our all team meeting. One week I asked people for their ideal weekend that they could do every weekend. So it couldn’t be a massive trip somewhere…it needed to be the fun and easy things that we often overlook. Answers included picking a random groupon adventure, a favorite restaurant with a few friends, and even going to a favorite local park for a family picnic. We figured the most expensive weekend would cost $100, so I gave everyone a $100 bonus only after they recreated that weekend…which everyone went out and did within the next two weeks and then raved about as a group…and still rave about it months later. Again, culture building doesn’t have to be expensive!
Wrapping It Up
The hidden ROI of office culture isn’t just dollars — it’s sanity, loyalty, and momentum. Treat your culture like an investment, and you’ll get compound returns you never saw coming.