What's the price of a great culture?

Anyone working in the people development profession will have had to grapple with the challenge of attracting and retaining top talent at some point in their journey. The tweet from Jon Rosser highlights a common dilemma: an employee provides a salary expectation, but the company's offer falls short, compensating with the promise of a "great culture."

This scenario raises some important questions that we can reflect on:

1. How do we quantify and evaluate a "great culture"? Culture is somewhat subjective, so what tangible aspects should we look for to provide social proof?
2. At what point does a lower salary make an offer unattractive, despite a supposedly great culture? Is there a threshold where the financials simply don't make sense for the employee?
3. How can we build cultures that truly motivate and engage employees, rather than using "culture" as a Band-Aid for inadequate compensation?
4. What role does transparency play? Should we be upfront about using culture as an incentive when salaries are lower?

It's also crucial to recognise that the overall company culture may not be reflective of the actual team climate an employee will experience. Even in organisations touted as having exemplary cultures, there can be pockets of toxicity in certain teams due to dysfunctional leadership, poor processes, or misaligned values. A 'great culture' with a good PR team can mask deeply troubled sub-environments, and this is what we seek to measure with PCS - a survey that gets under the skin of what's really happening in your teams.

As leaders, we must think critically about these dynamics. A healthy culture definitely impacts retention and performance, but it can't be an excuse for underpaying staff. Coaches and consultants - what strategies have you seen work in balancing these factors?

CEOs and executives - how do you approach this with your compensation philosophies? Do you risk losing talent by overpromising on culture ?

What would you do?