Beyond Perks: Why People-First Cultures Fail Without Respect, Balance, and Support

At a previous employer, there was a genuine effort to create a people-first culture. We organized birthday breakfasts, catered staff BBQs at the beach, and even received personal notes of encouragement from the CEO. Despite these efforts, employee retention didn’t improve. In our semi-annual employee surveys, only slightly more than half of the staff agreed that the organization had a people-first culture.

When I joined Perceptyx , I decided to dig deeper into three years of archival survey data using my new analytics tools (with the other organization's permission). What I discovered in only a few minutes was eye-opening. While our leaders had good intentions, they were focused on the wrong things. The employees who believed in the company’s people-first approach were the ones who felt respected by their managers, had a good work-life balance, and had the resources they needed to succeed in their roles. It was that simple.

The key insight? In our efforts to create a people-first culture, we were actually diverting time and resources away from what mattered most. BBQs and mandatory fun events, meant to foster engagement, ironically made it harder for employees to maintain work-life balance. Some of us would leave the BBQ knowing we had 6 - 8 hours of work to complete before returning to the office the next day. In the process, we lost sight of what truly mattered—respect, balance, and support.

Over the fourteen years since that discovery, I’ve seen the same story repeat in various forms across other organizations. Leaders try to “fix” retention or culture problems by adding perks and doing more. However, the real solution often lies in doing less while focusing on the core experiences that make a meaningful difference. This is where people analytics adds value, helping leaders and organizations prioritize the things that make a real difference.