Here is the data you need to show the ROI of your workplace culture.
Employees are the engine that drives company performance, and with increasing pressure on business leaders to innovate and grow the bottom line, HR leaders need to make the case for investing in culture.
Here are 5 numbers that can help people leaders prove that HR is vital to the bottom line:
Alex Edmans, a renowned Professor of Finance and keynote speaker on several TED stages, recently conducted a study to investigate the financial benefits of great company culture by measuring the performance of UK’s Best Workplace™ organisations in comparison to other companies.
In this 2024 study, Edmans created a hypothetical stock portfolio of UK-based, publicly traded companies from the Best Workplaces Lists; exploring the returns of this ‘Best Workplaces portfolio’ vs. FTSE All-Share Index over a 23-year period, from 2001 to 2023.
The results show that:
If you had started a stock portfolio of the UK’s Best Workplaces™ in 2001, with an investment of just £100, you would have seen more than 4-times the returns of a similar investment in the FTSE All-Share.
Ultimately, when you invest in workplace culture – by genuinely putting your people first, and ensuring a consistently great employee experience for all – your business will be more profitable.
When it comes to recruiting, the value of workplace culture is inescapable. It’s easier to recruit exceptional talent when you can boast an exceptional experience.
A 2023 UK population study by QuMind and The Good Insight found that 67% of employees are more likely to apply for a job at a company Certified as a 'great place to work'.
Boosting your employer brand by investing in your culture can significantly reduce your recruitment outlay – and with recruitment costing an estimated £6,125 per employee (rising to £19,000 for a managerial role), that can make a huge difference to your bottom line.
In fact...👇
After earning Great Place To Work Certification, leaders at Ayming UK realised they could use their strong employer brand in recruitment to help the company switch to hiring new employees directly, rather than using an external recruitment company.
And it worked: “Certification™ is an excellent recruitment tool and has shown an absolute ROI in terms of attracting top talent to Ayming UK," says HR Director Jenny Temenu. "Over a 12-month period, we saved £173,300 and counting in Recruitment Agency fees via direct hires mentioning our Great Place to Work recognition when applying for jobs."
In the competition for talent and retention, ‘Great’ organisations in every industry come out ahead every time, retaining at least double the number of employees as the national average cited by CIPD.
It's simple – when employees love where they work, they don't want to leave. Which means that businesses that invest in their employee experience reap the benefits of a committed workforce that boosts the bottom line.
Let’s look at the 2025 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For®, using a common business metric: revenue per employee (RPE), which reflects the productivity and efficiency of a company’s workforce.
On average, the 100 Best Companies earn 8.5 times more revenue per employee than the U.S public market RPE. This astounding outperformance includes both public and private companies, with public companies reporting RPE that’s more than 9.4 times higher than market RPE, while private companies see more than 7.7 times higher. This financial advantage trends across industries, reinforcing the financial benefits of high-trust workplaces.
Discover more about the business benefits of a great workplace culture in our report The Culture Dividend, or watch the keynote from Alex Edmans.