Learn how to identify and develop potential leaders, create effective training programs, and build a robust leadership pipeline for your organization’s success.

A company’s success depends not just on what you do, but on who leads those efforts.

Developing a strong pipeline of future leaders isn’t merely good HR — it’s essential for ensuring business continuity, driving company success, and creating a workplace where everyone has the opportunity to advance.

Leaders at great organizations help talent grow and develop. They know that employees perform best when the organization is invested in their future. They also know that it’s important to identify and nurture the next generation of leaders who will take the reins behind them.

What is a leadership pipeline?

A leadership pipeline is a structured approach to preparing employees for leadership roles.

For organizations, it ensures they maintain a strong leadership succession — incoming leaders are already familiar with the business, eliminating the time and costs of external recruitment.

For employees, a pipeline ensures they have a consistent experience with leaders across the organization, even as those leaders may change. It also demonstrates that the company has a vested interest in employees’ professional growth and development.

A successful leadership pipeline will include the following:

• Succession planning: Determine how you will identify internal talent for potential leadership positions.
• Career progression planning: Create a clear pathway for potential new leaders that sets out the skills, experiences, and competencies needed to advance into senior roles.
• Leadership training: This could include workshops, seminars, and hands-on practice. Ensure it covers more than just business management — it should also teach soft skills like communication and team building that enhance leadership effectiveness.
• Mentorship: Encourage emerging leaders to shadow and be coached by more experienced executives. Regular one-on-ones can help new leaders identify their strengths and weaknesses.
• 360-degree feedback: Gather regular feedback from supervisors, peers, direct reports, and even clients to help new leaders identify their blind spots.

How to identify potential future leaders in your organization

Looking for new leaders is much more than just seeking out your top performers. While performance is important, there are many other key leadership traits, such as adaptability, problem-solving, and initiative.

Similarly, your potential leaders might not be the most vocal employees. Consider their actions, such as humility and compassion — not just their words.

At Great Place To Work®, we’ve identified nine high-trust behaviors that take leaders from good to great:

• Listening: Considering others’ points of view, asking questions, and being open to feedback
• Speaking: Sharing information clearly, transparently, and regularly
• Thanking: Showing sincere appreciation for good work and extra effort
• Developing: Nurturing employees’ talents and interests
• Caring: Taking the time to listen and understand employees’ personal experiences
• Sharing: Distributing compensation, incentives, and opportunities fairly
• Celebrating: Recognizing those who exemplify your company’s values
• Inspiring: Explaining the purpose behind the work your team does, and why it matters
• Hiring and welcoming: Greeting new employees warmly and setting them up to succeed from day one

Hotel chain Marriott International wants to ensure that every employee, regardless of role, feels empowered to be a leader. It has also redefined its concept of leadership into three characteristics: curiosity, courage, and connection.

Similarly, technology company Accenture looks at three key traits in its leaders: compassion, learning, and humility, with an overarching focus on building trust and connection in its workforce.

Recognizing leadership potential beyond job titles

Employees at all levels of the business can and should be considered as candidates for future leadership positions.

For example, middle managers serve as a connection point between the company’s overall vision and their direct reports’ daily work.

Frontline leaders whose teams interact with customers need to demonstrate many of the high-trust leadership behaviors, such as listening and caring — in both good and bad situations.

Maybe an entry-level employee takes initiative to troubleshoot an inefficient process, or a mid-level employee takes a struggling colleague under their wing, acting as a sponsor and helping them to feel safe, seen, and understood.

How to develop future leaders through training and mentorship

Provide structured leadership training programs

Great leaders aren’t born — they’re made. With the right tools and training, anyone can hone their leadership skills. The key is to offer employees that opportunity.

A structured leadership training program could consist of workshops, executive coaching, and leadership simulations. But most importantly, it should equip employees with both business and people skills.

Training should also be tailored to employees at different stages in their leadership journey — those just starting may need basics like speaking with confidence and giving feedback, while those ready for more responsibility might need strategic thinking and conflict resolution.

The role of mentorship and coaching in leadership development

Mentors are one of the most valuable tools for training new leaders, since they can say, “I remember when I faced that same problem,” and share what worked (and what didn’t).

But perhaps most importantly, mentorship programs create personal connections that keep talented people engaged. When employees see that someone cares about their growth, they're more likely to stay committed to the organization. 

For example, at Camden Property Trust, newly hired employees are paired with mentors as part of their onboarding, demonstrating the company’s commitment to employee growth from their first day.

Mentorship programs that are designed to increase diverse representation in leadership have also had an impact on ensuring that everyone has an opportunity for growth. Cisco, No. 3 on the World’s Best Workplaces List, runs a program called “Jump” to help aspiring women leaders grow into new roles. Program participants are 1.4 times as likely as non-participants to get promoted, impacting Cisco’s stated goal of closing the gender gap across leadership roles.

Use feedback to accelerate leadership growth

The best feedback for growing leaders is specific and timely. Instead of vague comments like "you need to be more assertive," try something like, "In yesterday's meeting, when you backed up your proposal with clear data, the team really responded well."

Make feedback a regular habit, not just a once-a-year event during performance reviews. Quick check-ins create a culture where growth is part of everyday work.

Also, encourage new leaders to proactively seek feedback. Simple questions like, “What’s one thing I could have done better in that situation?” can open doors to insights they might never get otherwise.

Building a culture of continuous learning for leadership development

Great leaders have a growth mindset. They value curiosity and know the importance of staying ahead of changes rather than scrambling to catch up. They know that an innovative mentality is one of the key elements of company culture.

There are simple ways to nurture a mindset of continuous learning. Encourage questions and avoid quick answers. Set aside a small budget for books or courses. Create opportunities for people to share with their colleagues what they've learned.

“Be a lifetime learner,” said Diane Cafritz, executive vice president and chief innovation and people officer at CarMax. “The role that I have now, I had no functional expertise when I was put in that role … I had to learn all of it. And what I realized about myself was, I am at my best when I’m learning.”

Embrace inclusive leadership development

Leaders can be found anywhere. More than that, they should be found from anywhere and everywhere.

Great leaders don’t necessarily need a certain education or even a certain type of experience. Rather, employees at all levels of the business and from varied backgrounds can show leadership potential. Some important questions to ask about your leadership pipeline are, “Is our candidate pool of potential leaders representative of our employee population when it comes to background and diversity?” and, “Are there any perspectives that we’re missing in leadership that would drive our organization forward?”

Seeking out these emerging leaders can also lead to a stronger.

The key to a sustainable leadership pipeline

Developing future leaders is an investment in your long-term business success. Consider ways that you can actively build your own leadership pipeline through training, mentorship, and inclusive leadership practices.

You can also use Great Place To Work’s employee experience survey to identify and develop strong leaders. By measuring workplace culture, you gain visibility into which leaders motivate performance versus which create barriers. This insight allows you to develop leadership pipelines that don’t just fill positions, but truly transform your workplace.

The four-day model promises a compelling trade: maintain productivity while giving workers more time to rest, pursue personal interests, and care for their families.

Who doesn’t want to work less?

No matter how much you may love your job, it’s unlikely you’d turn down the chance for an extra day off — every single week.

The five-day workweek that we know today started on factory floors in the 1920s. But more and more organizations are finding the traditional workweek doesn’t apply to the modern working world, and that putting in more days doesn’t necessarily translate to being more efficient.

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that have made the shift away from this tradition say it helps to attract more talent, improve employee satisfaction, and even increase productivity. But is it right for your organization?

What is a four-day workweek and why is it trending?

A four-day workweek is exactly as it sounds: a workweek that lasts only four days instead of the traditional five.

This could either be through compressing hours, such as employees working 10 hours per day instead of eight to reach a full 40-hour week or reducing the total number of hours per week.

While there has long been interest in a four-day workweek, that interest has grown post-pandemic, as employees seek more flexible work arrangements.

“I’ve seen significantly more comments from employees on Trust Index™ surveys about a desire for a four-day workweek, especially for employees who are working in person,” says Ruby Storm Green, culture coach at Great Place To Work®.

“Part of this is due to return-to-office. Employees are experiencing more frustration with commuting, from both a time and cost perspective. Working four 10-hour shifts would remove an entire day of commuting and its associated costs.”

In 2022, 61 companies in the UK ran After the six-month pilot, 92% of participating employers said they would continue with a shorter workweek, with 18 of them confirming it to be a permanent change.

Among the biggest benefits were employees’ well-being:

• 71% reported reduced levels of burnout
• 54% reported a reduction in negative emotions
• 39% said they were less stressed
• 37% said their physical health improved

“A four-day week allows for more work–life balance overall,” says Green. “For example, if someone works in healthcare in a role that is emotionally taxing, working four 10-hour shifts instead of five eight-hour shifts would give that employee three days to decompress. It helps to prevent burnout and, in turn, reduces turnover.”

While businesses may worry about productivity dropping if they were to offer reduced or compressed hours, this didn’t seem to be the case in the study.

Company growth and revenue stayed roughly consistent over the trial period. And turnover, which can be costly to employers, dropped by 57%.

The pros of a four-day workweek for employees and businesses

Improved employee well-being and mental health

Shorter weeks allow more time for recovery, family, and personal priorities. The result? Reduced burnout and absenteeism, and better focus during working hours.

San Francisco-based e-commerce company Bolt trialed a four-day workweek when they realized several employees were experiencing burnout. For three months, all employees went offline every Friday.

The trial was a total success, with 84% of employees reporting improved work–life balance, and 86% saying they were more efficient with their time.

Boosted productivity and focus

Sometimes, less time at work actually leads to more output. When there are fewer hours available, teams become more intentional about their time. They evaluate what’s truly necessary versus getting caught up in “busywork.”

The key is to give employees clear goals and the autonomy to make those decisions about what needs to be done. When employees understand their deliverables and are trusted to achieve them, it gives more purpose to their work.

Enhanced talent attraction and retention

If you’re trying to recruit and retain top talent, flexible work could be a key component of your employee retention strategy.

Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly demanding better work–life balance, and flexible work arrangements can help to retain parents and caregivers, who may be struggling to manage their work duties with home responsibilities.

After Bolt changed to a four-day workweek, the company saw a 200% increase in applicants. And Great Place To Work research has shown that when employees have a say in when and how they work, this builds a sense of workplace trust, which in turn boosts employee productivity, engagement, and retention.

Cost and sustainability benefits

A four-day workweek could even cut your operating costs, save employees’ money, and help the planet.

If your company is open one less day, that could mean less electricity, heating, and water. And employees commuting less reduces your emissions output.

It can also help with staffing costs. When employees have a free day to deal with personal appointments that might not be possible on weekends, it reduces the need for time off.

The cons of a four-day workweek and potential risks

Potential for increased work intensity

Not all work is suited to a four-day week and may actually increase stress instead of reducing it.

Healthcare staff might find themselves rushing through patient appointments, potentially compromising the quality of care. Manufacturing teams might increase error rates when pushing to meet the same production targets in fewer days.

Inequity across roles and teams

Four-day workweeks can create workplace divisions if they’re not implemented fairly. For example, a tech company might give its developers Fridays off, but helpdesk staff must continue working shifts to provide customer support.

It’s important to extend benefits to all employees. That could be with flexible scheduling options, additional paid time off, or comparable perks for those who can’t work compressed weeks.

Customer service and collaboration challenges

“If you are only open four days a week, that could make it more difficult to serve all of your customers,” says Green.

It may also be harder for teams to collaborate if they’re not all working on the same days — employees may need to negotiate and coordinate so that certain team members always work the same shifts.  

Cultural misalignment or poor implementation

When team members work on different days, messages might get missed, or decisions could get delayed.

Managers need to ensure company information is shared equally with everyone, rather than expecting those who were off that day to simply “catch up.”

Similarly, there should be clear expectations about response times. If an employee feels obligated to respond to their working colleagues even though it’s their day off, it wipes out all the well-being benefits of a reduced workweek.  

Is a four-day workweek right for your organization?

Not every workplace will fit the four-day model. Before jumping in, consider your operational needs.

“It’s important to determine how it will impact customers,” says Green. “Will you need to close your business for an extra day a week? Or is there enough staffing resources to have the scheduling spread across days?”

A pilot program can help you test the waters. Bolt ran their pilot program for three months before deciding to make it permanent.

Rimini Street, a software and engineering services provider, also ran a three-month pilot for adopting a four-day workweek. Employees were encouraged to take off one day a week as a “Fabulous Friday.”

The company then assessed how its four-day workweek impacted culture and employee satisfaction, and whether there were any negative effects on the organization or its clients. Those results helped them to decide how to roll it out long-term.

How to implement a four-day workweek thoughtfully

Begin with employee listening

“The first step is listening to employees,” says Green. “Does everyone want a four-day workweek, or is it just specific employees? Is it possible to have some employees work five days a week and some four days a week?”

Use surveys, such as Great Place To Work’s employee engagement survey tool, to get a sense of how employees view your workplace and their experience within it. You can also conduct focus groups for more open-ended discussions to gauge interest and concerns.  

“Understanding why employees want to have a four-day workweek is also vital, as you need to ensure that their needs will actually be addressed with the change,” says Green.

Establish outcome-based performance goals

Trust is the key to making shorter workweeks work. Managers must trust that employees will get their work done with less oversight, and workers need to trust that they’ll be judged on results, not hours logged.

Clarify how success will be measured and conduct regular check-ins to catch and fix problems quickly. Ask employees what would help them succeed in a shorter week, then build the new schedule around their input.

Create flexibility, not rigidity

Every workplace is different, and what works for one employer may not work for another.

For example, a financial institution may need to maintain the same hours as the stock market, which means closing on a Friday simply isn’t feasible.

Similarly, every employee and role is different. Some may thrive with a 10-hour workday, while others may lose their steam. Whatever new schedule you adopt for your workplace, it needs to be equitable to all employees, rather than benefiting only a select few.

Give options that support both your business and your employees. These could include compressed hours, job sharing, or flexible PTO.

For inspiration, check out these flexibility examples from great workplaces.

How leadership can guide the shift to flexible work

Model balance and trust

Leaders at the Best Workplaces™  practice what they preach.

In a four-day week or other flex arrangement, leaders must take their own time off and respect boundaries. If management is sending late-night emails on their days off, it tells employees that they aren’t really entitled to their own time off either.

It’s also important to focus on outcomes rather than hours logged and resist the urge to micromanage. Teams that feel trusted to manage their time will perform better.

Communicate openly and regularly

Clear, consistent communication is key to any workplace, but especially when you are shifting to a flexible schedule.

Set up regular check-ins to ensure everyone stays aligned and create multiple channels for feedback to stay on top of what’s working and what’s not. Those could be anonymous surveys, team discussions, and one-on-ones.

Recognize success and make adjustments

Acknowledge early wins to build momentum, whether that’s completed projects, improved metrics, or positive feedback. Share these successes across the company to reinforce the value of the new approach.

But be willing to adapt based on data and feedback. If certain processes aren’t working or teams need modified schedules, make those changes promptly.

Create a culture that supports the future of work — whatever it looks like

The four-day workweek isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. While it can bring meaningful benefits for some organizations, it can pose real challenges for others.

Whether you’re adopting a four-day model or sticking with a traditional schedule, the foundation remains the same — a high-trust culture, clear expectations, and open communication.

Curious how your workplace might benefit from a reduced workweek? Great Place To Work’s employee surveys can guide companies in making thoughtful, data-informed decisions about flexible work strategies.

Great leaders nurture accountability by motivating and inspiring employees to work hard for them. Employees don’t get the job done because they’re told to — they do it because they want to succeed.

Business leaders have a lot on their plates. The last thing they need to be doing is micromanaging their employees.

Not only is micromanaging a waste of leaders’ time, but it also reduces employees’ engagement and quality of work. In turn, a leader might feel they need to micromanage even more to get employees back in line, creating a vicious cycle where no one is performing at their best.

The way to move from micromanagement to empowerment and a more purpose-driven culture is to build trust with your people. Make sure they understand how their job is tied to the company’s purpose. Set clear expectations and ensure employees are recognized for their efforts.

Micromanagement vs. accountability

Keeping employees accountable doesn’t mean constantly looking over their shoulders.

When leaders micromanage, they overly control how employees complete their tasks. Whereas when leaders let employees take accountability for their work, they’re still setting expectations and measuring results, but without dictating how the work gets done.

It all comes down to ownership:

• Accountability is about taking ownership of results, both good and bad. To feel like they own a result, an employee needs a degree of independence and control over how they achieve that result.
• Micromanagement is when a leader takes ownership. And in doing so, they take away that employee’s accountability. They’re interfering in work that should fall within the employee’s control. This is proven to be a major cause of employee burnout.

Ultimately, accountability is rooted in trust, whereas micromanagement is rooted in a lack of trust. The message accountability conveys from leader to employee is, “I believe you are responsible and capable.” Micromanagement says the opposite.

How to hold employees accountable without micromanaging

We typically think of “holding people accountable” as something that happens when people aren't meeting expectations. But true accountability is about ownership of both good and bad results.

Having a clear plan for accountability when everything goes well — such as rewards, recognition, and career growth — is just as important, if not more, than your plan for what happens if expectations aren't met.

Set clear expectations and goals

One of the most important pieces of the accountability puzzle is ensuring company goals are well-defined.

Not only does this give employees clarity on what’s expected of them, but it also provides a sense of purpose — and when employees feel like their work has purpose, they’re more likely to stay with an organization longer and work harder.

“Accountability is rooted in trust, whereas micromanagement is rooted in a lack of trust.”

It’s also important to ensure employees have their own goals. What do they want to learn? How do they want to grow? Where do they see themselves in the future?

Help employees develop their own SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example, maybe an employee wants to develop their leadership skills. Together, you might decide for them to lead two team projects (specific) over the next quarter (time-bound), with success measured by on-time completion and peer feedback (measurable). This builds valuable skills (relevant) through a manageable number of projects (achievable).

Then, when assessing that employee’s performance, don’t only consider how they’re supporting the business’s goals, but how the business is also supporting theirs.

Delegate effectively and trust employees

Another important part of accountability is collaboration. This includes inviting employees into conversations about company goals and delegating the ownership of tasks rather than managing every step.

When leadership intentionally involves people in decisions that affect their jobs or work environment, this gives them ownership. And the more sense of control employees have, the more likely they are to hold themselves accountable.

Autonomy also unlocks our natural problem-solving abilities. When people have the freedom to tackle challenges in their own way, they become invested in finding solutions rather than just following orders. This sense of ownership translates into higher engagement, enabling employees to see themselves as valuable contributors.

Establish regular feedback loops

Consistency is key when it comes to employee performance. Ongoing constructive feedback will encourage accountability since employees will have clear direction and support. Otherwise, employees may not know what’s expected of them — and if they don’t meet expectations, management may be tempted to step in and micromanage.

While the traditional approach to performance management has been annual reviews, many great workplaces have found continuous feedback to be a better approach.

For example, financial services firm Penn Mutual found that changing its performance calendar to align with its business cycle allowed leaders to address issues in real time. The firm also adjusted its rewards cycle to create a clear connection between a job well done and receiving a bonus or other incentive.

Foster open communication

When leaders actively listen to employee concerns, it creates a culture of transparency. And transparency fuels trust, which in turn leads to better innovation, reduced employee turnover, and even better business performance.

Being transparent doesn’t mean laying it all out. It means ensuring every employee is receiving information that’s relevant to them, with the opportunity to ask questions. Broad, sweeping messages won’t resonate with employees the way that tailored communications will.

Some of our customers demonstrate how strong communication builds trust in leadership. CarMax recognized that effective leadership is ensuring every employee has a personal connection to management. To achieve this, it set up a guide to ensure regular meetings between every employee and their manager at each of its stores.

IT company WP Engine is transparent about pay ranges for internal opportunities that an employee might be qualified for, thereby encouraging them to grow within the company. 

Focus on outcomes, not processes

No two people are exactly the same, and this also goes for how they work. Micromanagers focus on the process, when the reality is that there may be several ways for an employee to take a project from start to finish.

Instead, put your focus on results when evaluating performance. This shows employees that you trust their judgment and are willing to give them the space to complete tasks in a way that makes the most sense to them.

For example, you might:

• Measure the number of email subscribers rather than how many emails were sent on a marketing campaign
• Evaluate customer satisfaction scores instead of monitoring how many minutes each support call takes
• Track positive reviews and return visits instead of monitoring if front desk staff follow a rigid check-in script word-for-word

How to address accountability issues without micromanaging

Address performance issues promptly and fairly

The best way to manage poor performance is to get ahead of it.  

Avoiding difficult conversations about performance issues doesn’t make them disappear — it magnifies them. When you let problems linger, your top performers may wonder why others aren't held to the same standards. Meanwhile, the struggling employee misses out on the opportunity to improve.

The longer you wait, the more uncomfortable the eventual conversation becomes for everyone involved.

But when an employee has had experiences where their manager helped their performance go from good to great, they’re more likely to turn to that manager and be an equal partner when their performance slips and needs correction.

If a manager waits until performance slips to get involved, the employee instead will feel that performance conversations with their manager are a liability rather than an asset, and will be defensive and disengaged.

Get in the habit of proactively managing exceptional or good performance as well — positive reinforcement is a powerful motivator.

Some ways to provide constructive criticism that motivates improvement include:

• Using concrete examples instead of generalizations
• Explaining the impact of the behavior on team goals or outcomes
• Asking questions to understand their perspective
• Collaborating on solutions rather than dictating them
• Balancing criticism with recognition of their strengths
• Providing resources or support to help them succeed

Use performance management systems

It's nearly always true that employees who are underperforming need at least one of three things:

1. More time and attention from their manager

2. Firmer boundaries on certain aspects of their work

3. Tougher criteria  to demonstrate improvement

Many of these actions can feel like micromanagement, so the way to avoid this is to ensure the employee feels engaged in their own performance management and success. If the employee isn’t, corrective measures from their manager will feel like an imposition instead of a mutual agreement.

It’s a good idea to set up regular performance check-ins with every employee from day one. That way, you can track changes in performance before they become an issue and also empower employees to take ownership of their own performance plan from day one.

Ask employees to come prepared with their own personal assessments and ask for feedback on how you’re supporting their success. Make sure to connect their individual goals to the goals of their team and the company overall.

Also, remember that a good performance management system doesn’t just look at employees’ day-to-day. It also considers their personal goals and growth opportunities.

For example, many great workplaces offer leadership training programs that motivate employees to perform at their best. Such a program could work in tandem with more traditional performance reviews and check-ins.

Recognize and reward accountability

A sign of a great employee–manager relationship is when the employee is the one who takes the lead on correcting their performance.

The employee is the person who has the most vested interest in their own success, so if they’re underperforming and not reaching out to their manager for help, it’s often because they don’t know they’re underperforming or don’t feel they’ll get the support they need to do better.

Of course, employees need a high degree of trust with their managers to feel safe doing this. One way to create this sense of safety is to foster a culture of recognition.

Celebrating employees’ efforts is an important leadership behavior for creating a high-trust workplace, where employees feel empowered to speak up and take more accountability in their work.

According to a 2025 Great Place To Work® survey of 1.3 million employees, when employees feel that everyone in the company can get recognition for their work, they’re 60% more likely to give extra effort and 40% more likely to participate in company innovation.

Here are some ways you could reward employees for taking initiative:

• Offering special assignments that align with their career goals
• Encouraging professional development opportunities, such as conferences or training sessions
• Providing opportunities to lead new initiatives or mentor other team members
• Giving rewards such as financial compensation or time off after completing a challenging project

Creating a leadership culture that drives accountability

The most important factor when it comes to employee accountability is trust. When leaders trust their employees, they’re more likely to see higher engagement, improved performance, and better business performance.

Want to know if your company promotes a culture of accountability — or stifles through micromanaging? Great Place To Work’s employee engagement software uses a data-driven approach to the employee experience and can help you build a high-trust culture where employees take ownership and pride in their work.

To our customers: If you're looking to hold employees accountable without falling into the trap of micromanagement, the Trust Index™ Survey's Manager Access feature is your ideal tool. This feature provides managers with detailed insights into their team's survey results, allowing them to see whether their reports trust them — a key indicator of great leadership and not micromanaging. By using these insights, managers can build a culture of trust and accountability, ensuring employees feel valued and motivated to take ownership of their work. The Manager Access feature helps managers compare their team’s performance against industry benchmarks and develop actionable plans based on your Trust Index data. If you’re already using the platform but haven’t activated the Manager Access feature, talk to your Customer Success Manager about upgrading today to transform your leadership approach and drive your team towards success.

The best-kept secret to retention? The stay interview. Here’s how structured conversations with talent help build trust and employee engagement.

When was the last time managers sat down and talked with their employees about their goals and what motivates them? Was it during the interview process? Or when performance reviews rolled around?

If the next time you sit down to meet with top talent is during an exit interview, then it’s too late.

After the Great Resignation of 2021, has become an increasingly important tool in strengthening workplace culture. It’s a conversation not focused on reasons for quitting, but rather on why workers are staying put.

Leaders at high-performing workplaces understand that proactively addressing people’s workplace concerns and understanding what they need to grow is key to employee retention and engagement.

What are stay interviews?

Stay interviews have been adopted by great workplaces for some time. This interview is essentially a meeting between leadership and team members that goes beyond the typical one-on-one check-in. This informal, employee-focused conversation is an opportunity for managers to sit down with their first reports to understand how they’re feeling in their current role.

Stay interviews share a similar purpose to exit interviews: an opportunity for leaders to gain candid insight into the employee experience and company culture. The critical difference is that stay interviews provide an opportunity to ensure your people are thriving within your organization.

A stay interview has two key objectives:

1. Learn what your employees like and dislike about their role, function, and company culture
2. Build trust through two-way communication between managers and people

Stay interviews are an easy way to understand better the unique challenges and experiences of diverse individuals in the workplace and take action to improve the employee experience.

The benefits of stay interviews

Here are four compelling reasons why organizations should make stay interviews part of their company culture:

Improved retention rates

Employees eventually feel stuck if they’re not developing and if the organization isn’t investing in their growth. They’ll eventually want to find more opportunities to grow elsewhere.

Research backs this up: 53% of your workforce is considering new opportunities. Rehiring new talent is expensive. The cost of replacing a single employee can range from one-half to two times an employee’s annual salary,

Introducing stay interviews is a cost-effective solution to help organizations identify and address the factors that contribute to turnover. Giving employees a voice, in the form of a stay interview, is a powerful retention strategy – it demonstrates that leaders are working to stay connected with all employees and believe they have something valuable to say

Higher employee satisfaction and engagement

Stay interviews provide employees with a platform to share their needs, concerns, and aspirations in a one-on-one environment. Organizations that act on stay interview feedback help improve employee morale and job satisfaction.

Nissan implemented listening programs that included “skip-level meetings” where employees met with more senior managers to ensure leadership were hearing from a range of their people.

“It is important to be genuinely interested in listening to people and being open to receiving feedback, both positive experiences and areas that require improvement,” said Laura Gillespie, director of talent management, Americas, for Nissan.

The car company saw clear business results from their efforts and, importantly, a resounding 83% of employees said they’re proud to work there.

Early identification of workplace challenges

Listening early and often helps organizations uncover critical issues related to work, leadership, career growth, and company culture.

Addressing pressing concerns and implementing meaningful improvements can prevent dissatisfaction from escalating. One example is Wellstar Health System in Georgia. With health care facing unique stresses and safety concerns, it became crucial for Wellstar to ensure leaders were actively listening and responding to employee feedback.

“There have been a lot of safety concerns in the health care world lately. We heard things like, ‘I don't feel safe now… What are you going to do about it?’” explains Samantha Ros, director of team member engagement.

The leadership team responded by taking employee feedback seriously and initiating strategic investments in safety, in turn building trust between leaders and their people.

Strengthened trust between employees and leaders

The secret to attracting and holding onto top talent lies in relationships. Trustworthy, credible, and personable managers have a significant positive impact on employee commitment, motivation to give extra effort at work, and company culture.

Stay interviews are an opportunity for leadership to have honest, two-way conversations with their team. Trust is then built by taking action on their feedback. Through demonstrating competence and honesty, lenders earn their employees’ trust.

At typical workplaces, 57% of employees feel their manager shows a sincere interest in them. However, at the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For® in 2024, 83% of people feel their manager shows a sincere interest.

Kimley-Horn landed on the 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 list in 2024. With more than 7,500 employees, the engineering firm built trust between employers and leaders by implementing a thoughtful pay and compensation strategy across the organization.

Kimley-Horn regularly collects feedback from staff in the form of stay interviews. It’s also an opportunity for employees to ask leaders direct questions about pay structures.

How to conduct an effective stay interview

Listening is at the heart of creating a high-trust culture. Unlike an annual performance review, a stay interview is an opportunity for leadership to lean in and listen and gather candid feedback from their people.

Here are some tips to consider for conducting an effective stay interview:

● Help employees understand that stay interviews are an opportunity to create an environment where everyone feels safe and valued without reprimand. Level set expectations by sending out a calendar invite with a high-level description of the purpose of the meeting.|
● Provide any questions you want employees to reflect on in advance. Not only is it an effective use of everyone’s time, but it also gives team members the opportunity to come prepared to meet with leadership.
● Hiring people with a range of backgrounds and experiences is just the start — listening to them is what helps everyone thrive. Be thoughtful about who you interview to ensure you’re hearing the full spectrum of perspectives across your organization, from top to bottom and across departments.
● Aim to conduct stay interviews in-person or video call and keep them to 30 to 45 minutes. Choose a comfortable location to meet, whether that’s a smaller meeting room, going for coffee, or a walking meeting. Let employees lead and ask them to suggest where they’d like to meet.
● Create an environment where there is a high level of trust and transparency. Prioritize two-way communication; this is a conversation between two people to help build a better culture for all.
● Listen more than you speak and leave time to ask follow-up questions. Reflect back a summary of the feedback given and thank employees for their time and openness.
● Conduct stay interviews periodically throughout the year and ensure they’re scheduled independent of performance review season.
● Establish procedures on how leaders can act on feedback from employees and effectively follow up.

The most impactful stay interview questions to ask

Stay interview questions are going to differ, depending on your industry or type of business. However, there are common areas that all organizations can cover and gain feedback on:

Job satisfaction and engagement

Employee satisfaction is also a key driver of employee engagement, which indicates how committed people are to the company and its mission.

Ask questions that will help leaders assess job fulfillment and employee satisfaction, such as:

● What do you look forward to when you come to work each day?
● What do you like most or least about working here?
● If you could change any one part of your job, what would that be?
● What might tempt you to leave?

Growth and development

The ability to develop and grow employees is a crucial leadership trait, one of the nine high-trust leadership behaviors at the Best Workplaces™. While sometimes it’s leaders who see potential in employees that they might not see in themselves, employees can equally tell leaders what they need to grow and advance.

Stay interviews are an opportunity for leaders to get curious about their team’s career aspirations and development:

● Do you feel your knowledge, skills, and experience are being fully utilized?|
● What would you like to learn more about, within or outside of your current role?
● What would make your job more satisfying?
● Which other jobs here interest you?

Work environment and culture

Stay interviews can also reveal insights about team dynamics and company culture. A great company culture is one where employees feel seen and heard, where management is transparent, and where teams are proud and excited to work together. The result? A stronger company overall.

Here are some questions to ask about the work environment and culture:

● How would you describe our company culture to a new employee?
● What do you like or dislike about the company culture?
● How do you like to be recognized for your work?
● How is your relationship with your direct supervisor?
● How would you describe your work-life balance?
● If you could change one thing about morale, what would it be?

Employee retention and future outlook

Lack of growth opportunities or opportunities for advancement is the top reason for leaving a workplace. Look for ways to improve employee retention and explore people’s long-term career plans within the company:

● What are your long-term professional goals?
● How can we support you in attaining them?
● Are there any situations that have made you consider leaving?
● How can we support you along your career path?
● What other skills do you want to build to progress in the company?

Turning stay interview insights into action

The stay interview process doesn’t end when the meeting is over. Similar to an employee engagement survey, stay interviews are an opportunity to capture a rounded employee experience and unlock meaningful insights.

Provide a framework for managers to compile feedback received from each employee in a format that is easy to analyze and share. Identify common themes, emerging concerns, challenges, and motivators employees may have to stay or leave.

Prioritize key areas and create an action plan for improvements. Strategies can be company-wide, team-specific, or specific to each individual. Set actionable goals that are clear, obtainable, and help create a great workplace for all.

For example, if employees across the organization report feeling overworked, organizations could help address employee burnout by implementing strategies that alleviate stress. Carta is one company that took steps to cultivate a healthy work–life balance by eliminating the guilt of PTO and implementing a policy where each employee is required to take at least 15 days off a year.

If any action items were discussed during a stay meeting, leaders should prioritize addressing those needs first, take steps to implement a meaningful change, and follow up with employees so they know they’ve been seen and heard.

Common challenges in stay interviews and how to overcome them

While there are many benefits implementing face-to-face stay interviews, there are also some challenges employees and leaders could face.

Problem: Hesitancy to speak up

Let’s start with employees. A stay interview is an opportunity for employees to have their voices heard, but not everyone may fully embrace it. When people are sitting across from a senior leader they rarely interact with, it’s understandable that some would be hesitant to share feedback or fear retaliation if they do.

Solution: Psychological safety

Employees are more likely to share honestly if they feel a sense of safety. Part of conducting successful stay interviews is to foster a psychologically safe environment that encourages open communication for all.

Simon Sinek wrote about psychological safety in the workplace in his book “Leaders Eat Last.” He wrote that great leadership is about making employees feel safe so they can focus on work without fear for their own survival.

Creating a safe environment requires leaders to be vulnerable and participate in a two-way dialogue, rather than a top-down interview process. When employees feel safe, they’re more engaged, more willing to speak up and raise concerns, and far more likely to bring forward game-changing ideas.

Problem: Receiving feedback

In stay interviews, managers could receive feedback that’s difficult to hear — especially if it’s personal feedback such as their management style or hearing their direct report doesn’t feel a sense of belonging on their team.

Solution: Open and active listening

A cornerstone of any organization is building a culture of trust, the same is true for stay interviews. This is not a time to be combative and repute feedback. Managers need to come from a position of humility and curiosity, not defensiveness.

Keep the conversation constructive and positive, even if the comments made are ones you don’t agree with. Be respectful and ask follow-up questions from a place of curiosity and care to fully understand an employee’s views or concerns. Finally, view difficult feedback as an opportunity for personal growth and to implement positive change.

Take Ray Dalio, former CEO of Bridgewater, as an example. He once received an email from a colleague that said: “Ray, you deserve a D-minus for your performance today in the meeting. You did not prepare at all because there was no way you could have been that disorganized.”

Ray not only took that feedback on board, he went on to share it with more than two million viewers of his TED Talk on how to build a company where the best ideas win.

Strengthening employee retention through meaningful conversations

Stay interviews are a great tool to improve employee retention, engagement, and workplace satisfaction. Organizations that prioritize employee feedback and take action on insights from stay interviews build stronger, more resilient workplace cultures.

Deepen your understanding of your company culture with Great Place To Work 카지노커뮤니티™ and employee engagement surveys. The Great Place To Work Model™ delivers detailed, reliable data and unlocking meaningful insights about your employee experience.

Take a proactive approach to workplace improvement and try our employee engagement survey tool today.

Top leaders from Edward Jones, World Wide Technology, Marriott International, and others spoke about the path forward despite whipsawing results on the stock market.

The stock market and the impact of tariffs have been top of mind for many business leaders this week.

The markets were down April 3, with the S&P 500 losing more than 4% over the course of the day due to concerns over tariffs and their impact on global trade. When a 90-day pause was announced on many of those tariffs, markets soared with the S&P 500 gaining more than 9%, and then sank again.

What are leaders to make of this kind of volatility?

For the CEOs speaking at the For All Summit, the answer comes down to people.

Consider Edward Jones, with 54,000 employees helping 9 million customers make a sound financial plan. Penny Pennington, managing partner of Edward Jones, shared her assessment of a turbulent market, including the four “worst words” you can hear in the investment world: “This time it’s different.”

Having led seven generations of clients through volatility, crises, and geopolitical turmoil, Pennington sees a crisis that is urgent, but very familiar. “A good plan is better than a bad prediction every time,” she shared with Summit attendees.

For Edward Jones, that good plan is investing in people. It starts with purpose, which Pennington identifies as clearly articulated values that guide the organization. Those values inform culture, which guides strategy and empowers execution. “When all of that comes together, it creates an enduring institution,” she says.

Great Place To Work research supports this, where high-trust companies not only outperform their peers during economic downturns, but see outsized market performance that continues well into the future.

Empowering employees to excel

Great workplaces know that empowered employees deliver exceptional experiences for customers.

For leaders like Jim Kavanaugh, co-founder and CEO at World Wide Technology, the experience customers and partners have working with his employees is a source of deep pride. “The amount of feedback I get from our partners on how much they enjoy working with our employees is amazing,” he says.

^{Jim Kavanaugh, CEO of World Wide Technology speaks at the For All Summit.}

At the heart of their strategy are their values – principles that guide the organization through all the disruption happening in the technology sector. “The one thing that I think is a constant are your values and your culture,” he says. “If you have a really strong set of values that you commit to, it’s amazing how that culture helps navigate through challenging times … and present opportunities.

One of those values? The importance of everyone to embrace a growth mindset and pursue lifelong learning. “You need to learn how to embrace constructive input,” Kavanaugh advises, a lesson he learned as an Olympic soccer player. “You don’t get better as a player if you think you all have the answers.”

The rise of AI demands agility

One of the things driving the rapid change and disruption in the marketplace is the rise of generative AI. Company values are crucial touchstones for how this technology can be used to innovate and uplevel the impact of every employee.

Leaders like Anthony Capuano, president and CEO of Marriott International, are looking for efficiencies that increase human capacity.

“All of us have had that unfortunate day of travel,” he shared as an example. The flights were delayed. The weather was miserable. Luggage was lost. The potential of AI to allow a desk clerk at a hotel to quickly check-in a traveler and have 120 seconds of extra capacity to offer a warm welcome make all the difference.

“We’re using AI everywhere,” he shared. “We want to use it to create capacity for better more impactful human interactions.”

Pennington puts it another way: “Automate the ordinary to humanize the extraordinary.”

“카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 business is a people business,” she says. “It’s a business built on trust.” That trust enables people to grow and develop, from adopting new AI tools to exploring new ways of serving customers.

How great workplaces build a better world

The impact of workplace culture isn’t confined to the marketplace. How employees feel about their work follows them home, a sacred responsibility that leaders like John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express take very seriously.

^{Leaders from DHL join Michael C Bush, CEO at Great Place To Work at the For All Summit in Las Vegas.}

“The biggest part of my job is to send people home happier than they arrived in the morning,” he shared from the mainstage at Summit. The reason why? “When people leave work unhappy, they take it out on the people they find at home.”

For Pearson, creating a great workplace is his way of preventing domestic violence, alcoholism, and child neglect. And an organization at the scale of DHL, with operations in 220 countries, the impact is enormous.

“I like to think people are right in the middle of everything we do,” he says. His aspiration: Be a great place to work, not for some or for many, but for all.

That doesn’t mean it’s an easy task, but it’s an essential part of DHL’s business strategy: People plus quality equals growth.

The hard road of collaboration

The closing keynote featured Jon M. Chu, Hollywood director behind hit films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Wicked.”

His final message to attendees was about the real work required to create a truly inclusive and collaborative workplace.

“When I started working on studio films, it was really hard to work with an editor,” he shared. “I just wanted to do it myself.” However, collaboration is what is required to create a truly great workplace that is more than the sum of its parts.

^{Hollywood director Jon M. Chu speaks with Ellen McGirt at the For All Summit in Las Vegas.}

Great Place To Work® research found that the likelihood that employees will give extra effort at work jumps 720% when they feel they have a cooperative, collaborative workplace, according to a survey of 1.3 million employees.

The secret to collaboration? Chu says it is all about communication. “I’m not just a storyteller when I release my movie,” he says. “I’m a storyteller at every step of the process.”  

And it’s still hard to open the door to collaboration and let outsiders into the process. “People start to run you over,” Chu says. However, he believes this difficult, demanding collaboration is the future of great work.

“If you have a great place to work, but the final result isn’t what you wanted, I don’t know if that is where I want to work,” he says. “You have to create great things.”

When you do great work, you earn the next opportunity, and open the door wider for others to come behind you and build a better world.

The For All Summit will return to Las Vegas in 2026! Get early tickets now.

Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work, started the conversation with leaders about how investing in people offers answers for a complicated business landscape.

If there’s one thing business leaders should do in this moment, it is to “zoom out.”

That’s the message from Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work in his keynote to start the For All Summit™ in Las Vegas. His advice is based in brain science, and how leaders can get fixated and miss the bigger picture.

“Right now the whole world seems to be zooming in — on what we fear, what divides us,” Bush says. “Businesses focus on pieces: AI, profit, the topline.”

A myopic view misses crucial context that underpins free trade, a fair exchange where both sides of the deal have something to gain.

The For All Summit is highlighting leaders who don’t accept this as the only way of doing business. And Bush’s message is pointed: “The purpose of business is to improve life for all people.”

Shareholders still reap the immense benefits of commerce, but so do employees, customers, and societies.

Can this approach compare with a more greed-based approach? Stories like Hilton say that creating a great workplace leads to impressive business results. From 2014 to 2024, the market cap for Hilton doubled. At the same time Hilton steadily rose on the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For® List, placing No. 1 for 2024 and 2025.

The secret ingredient? Trust.

“Trust is the universal currency,” Bush says. “Trust is how people who believe very different things can work together.”

How Hilton builds trust

How does Hilton build trust?

Laura Fuentes, EVP, chief human resources officer and head of Hilton supply management, talked about the importance of listening to employee voices – and how their feedback is changing how the company operates.

“In a way, we have a global listening crisis right now,” Fuentes says of the political and economic upheaval around the world driving lower levels of trust in institutions. To combat this, she asks herself and her team to act as “chief listening officers.”

What does that look like? Listening twice as much as speaking. “If I find myself talking too much, I’m not doing my job well,” Fuentes says.

The most important step might be the one that comes after a listening session. “You need to have a tight listen/act ratio,” Fuentes says. “We want to show that stories and feedback drive action.”

One example is how an employee shared their personal story with Fuentes about how a personal tragedy impacted his life, both at work and beyond, and the ways that Hilton both supported him and fell short. In response, Hilton launched a Crisis Concierge to support employees facing an emergency or trauma.

“Listening is your superpower,” Fuentes says. 

How trust matters to investors

Hilton’s financial performance hasn’t gone unnoticed by financial markets. The hotel chain is the most profitable investment ever made by Blackstone, the private equity group with $1.1 trillion in assets and managing a portfolio of 250 companies.

Investors like Blackstone care deeply about employee engagement and the level of trust across a workforce.

“Numbers follow people,” says Courtney della Cava, senior managing director and global head of portfolio talent & organizational performance at Blackstone. In her role, she focuses on ensuring the right management team is in place to drive value at the companies in which Blackstone invests.

“The No. 1 thing we can get right is leadership,” she says. Her remit is to look for learners, people with self-awareness and the grit to persevere. “We worry when somebody has all the answers,” she says. The No. 1 indicator of a leader with a learning mindset? They can tell you about a mistake they made, and how they responded.

Blackstone absolutely considers a chief human resources officer (CHRO) to be an essential part of the leadership team that drives success.

And Great Place To Work data plays a crucial role in helping these top leaders understand the preparedness of their workforce.

At Synchrony, No. 2 on the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For list in 2025, the board of directors is heavily engaged with employee survey data through Great Place To Work. “It’s invaluable,” says Laurel Richie, a board member at the financial services leader.

^{Michael C. Bush interviews Brian Doubles, CEO of Synchrony and Laurel Richie, an independent member of Synchrony's board.} 

“You read the report and you look at data:  90% of employees feel heard,” she says. Another metric she cares about: “90% of employees feel their manager seeks their input.”

This data is a leading indicator that Synchrony is on the right track. “That’s what stood out to me and gives me confidence that Synchrony is on a path of continued growth,” Richie says.

Opening doors to opportunity with trust

A foundation of trust is what unlocks potential for companies, a point that was driven home by Anirudh Devgan, PhD., CEO of Cadence.

^{Michael C. Bush interviews Anirudh Devgan, CEO at Cadence, at the For All Summit in Las Vegas.}

“Culture is super critical,” he shared with the Summit audience. “Everyone says they are customer focused — but if you don’t have the right team and the right technology, you won’t have the right customers.”

For Cadence, building a high-performance culture has three layers. At the foundation is trust and integrity. On top of that are the opportunities offered to every employee, regardless of who they are or what they do. From those layers of trust and opportunity is a meritocracy that drives excellence across the organization.

“Opportunity for all is a competitive advantage to get the best talent,” Devgan says. “If we build a culture where we attract the best people, we will perform better for our customers.”

For these leaders, this is a better way to do business.

“We are not doing it for charitable purposes,” Devgan says. “We are a great place to work because it helps our business.”

But don’t take these leaders’ word for it. Just check their financial performance, and the performance other Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For.

Join the livestream of the 2025 For All Summit mainstage, or join us next year for our premier leadership event.

CEO John Burke shared his leadership toolbox as part of the Executive Leadership Experience at the For All Summit™ in Las Vegas.

What does it take to create a great workplace experience for employees? It starts with leadership.

For John Burke, CEO of Trek Bicycle, No. 50 on the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For® in 2025, the vision for leaders is specific: “I go to work every day to make Trek better,” he shared with an audience of CEOs and HR leaders at the For All Summit.

At Trek, leadership is evaluated by levels, made popular by Stanford professor and author Jim Collins’s concept. For Burke, developing great leaders is about solving an existential challenge for Trek.

“I asked ChatGPT about the chances of a company like Trek making it to 100 years,” he says. The company will turn 50 in 2026, but ChatGPT only gave an 8% chance the company makes it another 50 years.

It’s this long-term view that drives Burke to demand excellence from not only leaders, but all employees to build a better company.

“I am cognizant of the fact that I won’t be here,” Burke says of a potential 100-year anniversary for Trek in 2076. “The key is understanding that no company is going to be successful with just one person dominating the company.”

What’s in Trek’s leadership toolbox?

To develop the leadership potential of every employee, Burke recommends five things:

1. A meaningful, relevant mission

Most companies have a mission statement, but too often the words are pablum that fail to meet the current needs of the business. “Ninety-five percent of the mission statements I see are crafted by the marketing department for the marketing department,” Burke says.

At Trek, a reimagined mission statement has been a starting place whenever the business faces headwinds.

Five years prior, the business stalled and Trek’s leaders were forced to ask, “Is our mission still relevant?” 

“The test of a mission statement is ‘Does it drive behavior every day?’” Burke says. Trek’s new mission is something Burke regularly calls on when evaluating work or offering feedback to his team.

For example, part of its mission is: “We only build products we love.” A shared commitment to excellence offers an easy way to assess the success of a new bike design or a marketing plan.

2. Create a fleet of sparkling minibuses

The minibus concept is another idea borrowed from Jim Collins who spoke to Trek’s leaders at a 2018 global leadership meeting.

Every Trek employee imagines they are on a minibus, a small team working toward a shared goal. Each minibus is assigned levels, from one to five.

The result? Trek has 750 minibuses, including retail stores, sales territories, manufacturing centers, and marketing departments. Each minibus is empowered to act like owners of the business. They have a flywheel where they understand they’re contributing to company goals. They know the facts about their business unit, both the good and the brutal truth. They have objectives and key results (OKRs), and a scorecard to measure performance.

Each minibus leader is asked to share what they need help with at leadership meetings, and ensuing conversations help everyone grow to create a stronger workplace.

The unique magic of the minibus is how every job becomes meaningful with a clearly stated goal and connection to company performance.

“Every single job is important,” Burke says. The minibus concept ensures that leaders communicate how every single person plays a vital role in company success.

3. Run your play to perfection

This principle is one Burke borrowed from Nick Saban, legendary football coach for the University of Alabama. Saban told Burke how he learned to focus on running each play in a game to perfection, and ignore the score.

It’s a philosophy that provides clarity for a business, Burke says. “It begs the question: What is the play?”

At Trek, the play might be an effort to simplify its product offering, or transform a retail store in Canberra, Australia, into the best bike shop in the world. Running plays turns the work into manageable chunks where teams can have a tangible impact.

4. Develop Level 5 leaders

At Trek, leaders receive a score of one through five, again borrowed from Jim Collins’s book “ Essential elements of Level 5 leaders include humility, will, vision, and the ability to bring the best team to the field.

“Too many people think leaders are born, not made,” Burke says. “Leaders have mentors. Leaders can be coached.”

Trek not only provides its leaders with leadership training, but offers leadership modules to its retail partners. “Who else is going to provide our bike shops with leadership training?” Burke says.

Leaders receive continuous feedback sessions, and every leader is expected to work on their skills.

“I expect everyone at Trek to have a Level 5 journey,” Burke says. If leaders aren’t willing to grow, they won’t be a good fit for the company.

5. Measure leadership with Great Place To Work

How can you measure the performance of your leaders? Trek relies on data from Great Place To Work surveys.

“I can’t tell you how big of an effect Great Place To Work has had on Trek,” Burke says. “You can go leader by leader. The best leaders have the best Great Place To Work scores. The worst leaders have the lowest scores.”

In this way, the Great Place To Work survey is a “fire detector” that offers essential insight into your company. And the impact of a leader is massive. “Leaders have a multiplying impact,” Burke says, “either multiplying positively or multiplying negatively.”

Every leader at Trek has a Great Place To Work objective as part of their OKRs. Every team member is responsible to make their workplace better, resulting in Trek’s jump from No. 94 on the Fortune 100 Best list in 2023 to No. 50 in 2025.

Join the livestream of the 2025 For All Summit mainstage, or join us next year for our premier leadership event.

High-trust workplaces achieve more than eight times more revenue per employee and outperform the market by nearly four times.

When I talk about how employee trust boosts business performance, audiences often nod in agreement. 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 do better when their people trust them. That makes sense to most people.

But then comes the question: “Can trust be measured in dollars and cents?”

Let’s look at the 2025 Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 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 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 earn 8.5 times more revenue per employee than the 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.

RPE success must be measured in tandem with the employee experience. The 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 don’t hit high RPE numbers by slashing headcount and overworking their teams. Well-being isn’t sacrificed for productivity. Quite the opposite. They outperform their peers in every employee experience metric from retention and well-being to innovation and productivity, with 90% of people describing their workplace as caring.

The 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 also more than triple their stock market performance. 

More nodding from the audience. That’s what they want: Financial returns that light up Excel reports. High stock prices and skyrocketing profitability. A workplace brimming with innovation and agility, and record levels of productivity and efficiency.

Their next question: “How?”

I love this question, but not everyone loves my answer: It’s all about leadership behaviors, not just benefits. Trust isn’t built through more PTO. It’s in how leaders make people feel and the actions they take.

The 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 have built a foundation of employee trust that fuels performance in all areas of their business — not just some areas, and not just for some people. They are more profitable and productive because they’ve created consistently positive work experiences, lower burnout rates, and higher levels of psychological and emotional health compared to typical workplaces.

Employees at these companies give extra in droves and are extremely agile, fueling high RPE levels. That doesn’t happen by giving them perks like free food or Apple watches. If it were that simple, every workplace would be great. It happens by listening to people and involving them in decisions that affect them. These leaders ensure all employees have opportunities for special recognition and make sure they believe that what they do matters; that they matter as human beings first and workers second. They’ve built organizations where transparency, well-being, and high levels of cooperation are cornerstones.

That is how business is done: with people, not to people. When that happens, the business benefits all stakeholders — from frontline workers to executives, shareholders to local communities. 

The 100 Best exemplify how high-trust cultures drive business success: Leaders shape the employee experience, which in turn shapes the culture, and that culture drives business performance.

Great leaders understand that it is because of their people that they outperform. It’s why they work on the nine high-trust leadership behaviors, so their people want to show up for them, work hard, and innovate when given a chance. They listen, evolve, and meet the moment.

In an , , geopolitical uncertainty, and , that moment is now.

Agility and extra effort drive productivity

The 100 Best are more productive than their competitors, thanks to high levels of agility and discretionary effort, which boost their impressive RPE numbers.

Employees don’t give extra because they’re told to work harder or adapt faster. They go the extra mile because they work in cultures of collaboration, special recognition, and purposeful work.

At the Best Workplaces, 84% of employees say they can count on people to cooperate. Why does that matter so much? Because the likelihood of extra effort skyrockets by a jaw-dropping 720% when employees work in a cooperative workplace. And when employees feel everyone has opportunities for special recognition and their work is meaningful, they are 60% and 50% more likely to give extra, respectively, according to an analysis of 1.3 million employee surveys from Great Place To Work.

Leaders make sure people feel a sense of purpose in their work, which can boost stock performance. They build cultures of camaraderie and cooperation through training and modeling leadership behaviors.

Accenture, for example, intentionally builds and tracks cooperation through its “Leader Network Diagnostic tool” and accompanying workshop, which helps break down silos and expand and strengthen connections among colleagues.

Synchrony’s President and CEO Brian Doubles redefined leadership by incorporating high-trust leadership behaviors into the company’s values and strengthening its culture of cooperation. Over the past three years, these efforts have led to Synchrony’s stock price doubling and voluntary turnover hitting an all-time low. Its ranking on the 100 Best has jumped from No. 44 in 2020 to No. 2 in 2025.

Not only do employees at winning companies give more effort, they’re able to quickly adapt to changes because they’re well-informed, understand their impact on the business, and feel empowered to voice their opinions.

But it’s when organizations celebrate new and better ways of doing things, regardless of the outcome, that agility soars — by 250%, according to 1.3 million survey responses.

For that to happen, you must have psychologically safe workplaces for people to speak up, as Harvard professor and bestselling author Amy Edmondson shared. Eighty-one percent of people at the 100 Best describe their company as psychologically and emotionally healthy compared with 57% at typical companies. When employees can try new things without fear, innovation thrives, as does financial success. 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that excel in “Innovation By All” experience 550% faster revenue growth.

Listening to and empowering employees to innovate has led to business success at Credit Acceptance, where leaders hold themselves accountable for acting on employee feedback. The company publishes a report on how many questions have been asked year-to-date, the number of up and down votes, and the status of those on which they have committed to “take action.” 

Agility is also 50% more likely when employees believe their leaders have a clear strategic vision, and 40% more likely when they are actively involved in decisions that affect them. It’s why leaders at Hilcorp Energy give employees access to the same financial information they have. They hold monthly meetings to keep everyone informed and involved in discussions about the company’s financials, breaking down details so employees learn how their contributions are linked to the company’s success.

Every leader today can create a culture that fuels business performance, no matter the company size, industry, or budget. The building blocks of employee trust are the same.

Focus on leadership — at all levels and for everyone. When you do, your business will be more profitable, productive, efficient, innovative, and resilient.

Here’s what investors should consider about the employee experience.

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that make the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For® List consistently outperform the market by 3.50 times, over a 27-year period, according to FTSE Russell, the global index and data provider.

FTSE Russell looked at decades of market data and developed a hypothetical index using companies that make the annual 100 Best list compiled by Great Place To Work® since 1998. FTSE Russell analyzes the annual returns of the publicly traded companies on the list and compares those results to other market benchmarks.

The result? If you had invested in 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천, you would more than triple what a similar investment might have earned in another portfolio.

“As a general rule of thumb, if you can outperform by 2% to 3%, that's considered quite noteworthy,” says Ryan Giannotto, manager of equity index research at the London Stock Exchange Group, which produces the Russell 1000, an index of the biggest U.S. stocks.

“A cumulative 27-year outperformance factor of 3.50 is incredible. This analysis gives credence to the contention that employee experience contributes to market returns.” 

While backwards looking data is no guarantee of future market success, the research offers a compelling case for considering the employee experience in an investment strategy. Just one year of overperformance might not tell investors much, but 27 years of performance demonstrate a proven pattern.

“This is why investors do not look at just a one-year return,” Giannotto says. “They look at a comprehensive history of return because they want to see how a company performs in different market conditions.” 

Even more impressive, the 100 Best benchmark overperforms without relying on the , companies that include Meta, Google, Apple and others, and that are responsible for most of the top-heavy growth in the market. “For the 100 Best to get competitive market returns without all those trillion-dollar market cap company names is very impressive,” Giannotto says.

The value of company culture

What are the metrics investors can use to understand if a company has thriving employees and a high-trust culture?

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that routinely make the 100 Best list have some common characteristics that offer helpful guideposts. Here are some of the metrics that set the best companies apart, according to Great Place To Work analysis:

1. Employee retention

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 on the 100 Best have two-thirds less turnover compared to the Bureau of Labor Statistics average. While the gaps are more meaningful in some industries compared to others, the overall trend is for high-trust workplaces to hold onto more of their workers.

Even when faced with layoffs, companies need to hold onto their best employees. When employees leave the company, they take their relationships, institutional knowledge, and future contributions with them. That’s why employee retention is an important indicator of future company performance.

2. Employees’ psychological and emotional health

At the 100 Best, 81% of employees report a healthy workplace, compared to just 56% at typical U.S. companies, a difference of 45%.

When you don’t have a healthy work environment, innovation and productivity suffers. Psychological safety, or how employees feel about taking risks in the workplace, is a key element of an innovation culture.

Investors might want to consider how a company is creating a culture where employees can generate new ideas, develop new skills, and push themselves to new levels of performance.

Great Place To Work research found that employees are twice as likely to want to stay in their job when they have a psychologically healthy workplace. They are also three times more likely to recommend your workplace to others, according to a survey of 1.3 million U.S. employees, helping attract the talent you need to solve the toughest business challenges.

Well-being even has a proven impact on core drivers of business performance, such as customer service. Employees are 48% more likely to say their company offers excellent customer service when they also have high levels of well-being.  

That indicates a potential competitive advantage for investors who identify companies that are giving their employees space to thrive outside of work.

3. Discretionary effort

Performance matters, and the great companies on the 100 Best list are no exception. At the 100 Best, companies on average have revenue per employee that is 8.5 times higher than the U.S. market.

But it matters how you get that performance bump.

These companies have found ways to get more from their workers by investing in their growth and development — and then reaping the rewards. Eighty-five percent of employees at the 100 Best report giving extra effort at their job. Only 60% of workers say the same at a typical workplace.

The stock market gains of the 100 Best over 27 years prove the value of a long-term approach to productivity and performance. The companies on the list can boast sustained performance because their workforce strategy is sustainable.

When evaluating the health of a company, it’s crucial to get employees’ perspective.

Are workers really invested in the company’s mission and bringing their full set of unique gifts to bear on behalf of their organization? Or, are those productivity numbers just smoke and mirrors that mask a deeply unhealthy culture — where employees cut corners, fudge the numbers, and fail to report errors in fear of retaliation?

If you listen to employees, you’ll get a different data set on the health and potential performance of a company. 

Whether or not you use that data to guide your investment strategy? That will be up to you.

See how your company performs

Get started with 카지노커뮤니티™ to see how your employees are contributing to the bottom line.

Note: Returns shown are hypothetical and for analysis purposes only. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Charts and graphs are provided for illustrative purposes only. Index returns shown may not represent the results of the actual trading of investable assets. Certain returns shown may reflect back-tested performance. Back-tested performance is not actual performance, but is hypothetical.

Here’s how the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 outperform the market on a key measure of efficiency and profitability.

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 across industries have pivoted from the frenzied hiring of the post-pandemic era to questions about efficiency.

Nearly half of managers said layoffs were likely at their company this year, per . 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 of all sizes are looking to do more with less, leverage technology to increase productivity, and trim costs.

If your company isn’t actively trying to shrink its workforce, a smaller team might still be on the horizon in key frontline sectors around the world. 

Which companies are ahead of the curve on productivity and efficiency? The 2025 Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For® have 8.5 times the revenue per employee (RPE) compared to the U.S. public market RPE.

What is revenue per employee and why does it matter?

Revenue per employee is the ratio of a company’s revenue divided by the total number of employees generating that revenue. For example, if you have revenues of $1 million and a workforce of 100 employees, your RPE is $10,000.

This simple metric can be used by companies of any size to answer a simple question: Am I getting enough value from the talent working for my company?

For most companies, this is an existential question. In analysis from McKinsey across eight major industries, companies spend at least compared to capital expenses like machinery or facilities.

As a result, RPE becomes a meaningful indicator of profitability. Although it doesn’t capture the full picture, it’s a valuable tool for understanding efficiency across your workforce, when weighed in concert with other metrics.

Why great workplaces have higher RPE

The Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For — a list of 100 organizations selected by Great Place To Work® based on employee survey data — represents a group of companies with the highest levels of employee trust in the U.S. as  measured within the Great Place To Work Model.

These high levels of trust result in stronger business performance compared to typical workplaces. Great Place To Work compared the revenue per employee of the 2025 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 against data collected by Aswath Damodaran, a professor and researcher at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

The result?  The 100 Best companies have an average RPE of $883,928. That’s 8.5 times higher than the $104,030 companies in the public market typically see per employee, according to from public sources like Bloomberg, Morningstar, and the S&P 500.  This gap cannot be attributed to factors like industry, or whether a company is publicly traded or privately held. In each industry, a significantly higher RPE was seen for the 100 Best. When looking at just publicly traded companies on the 100 Best, they had an RPE number 9.4 times the market, and private companies were close behind with an RPE 7.7 times higher.

The upshot? Regardless of industry, structure or ownership, high-trust workplaces have a much stronger RPE, indicating higher levels of productivity and performance.

Just look at the 100 Best, which over the past 26 years have outpaced the stock market by a cumulative factor of 3.5 times.

Making RPE sustainable

There are temporary ways to inflate your RPE numbers. Cut a large number of workers and suddenly it looks like your workplace is much more efficient on paper.

That’s not how the 100 Best do it. While they might conduct layoffs —  an unfortunate, but sometimes necessary part of doing business —  Great Place To Work data shows that something else is happening that drives sustained long-term performance at these companies.

“What you see is that leaders have a clear direction for the company,” says Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global research and recognition at Great Place To Work. “People are encouraged to innovate and find better ways of doing things, and there’s great communication.”

A combination of agility and effort drives efficiency and performance, resulting in more revenue generated per employee.

A foundation of trust unlocks the full potential of your workforce. At the 100 Best, 84% of employees say they can count on people to cooperate, a 29% increase over the typical U.S. workplace.

At great workplaces, a cooperative culture is one where promotions and recognition are awarded fairly and transparently. Employees have shared definitions of success, and open communication around company goals and expected behaviors. They can find a mentor who takes time to help them develop. They get support to try new ideas and are inspired to take on stretch assignments and take risks.

This creates a sense of purpose, an understanding that one employee’s success doesn’t come at the expense of someone else on the team. Instead, employees feel they have the tools to participate fully in a shared mission — and trust that their contributions will be celebrated and rewarded. People offer to help get a project across the finish line, even when the task at hand isn’t in their job description.

That’s why when employees say they can count on cooperation, they are a staggering 720% more likely to give extra effort on the job.

Why you should connect RPE to employee survey data

While revenue per employee can be affected by external factors, from supply chain costs to a changing economic climate, leaders should consider their workplace culture as a crucial driver.

Start by surveying employees, and use data to identify opportunities for building trust and unlocking potential across your workforce.

“This research emphasizes just how critical it is to invest in great leaders who can move your people and your business forward,” says Karina Monesson, director, global strategic workplace insights at Great Place To Work. With employee survey data broken down by leader, you can identify where employees are thriving or barriers that suppress team performance. 

Do employees have a manager who is invested in developing them? Is there frequent communication about company priorities and long-term goals? Do they understand what is expected of their role and how it contributes to the bottom line?

“That all starts with managers,” Monesson says, with the nine high-trust leadership behaviors offering a playbook for improving leadership across the organization.

Another place to look is access to innovation and engaging more employees in “jumping the S curve” or growth. Great Place To Work research found that when employees at all levels of the organization  have the opportunity to try new things and participate in developing new ideas or products, companies had 5.5 times the revenue growth of their less inclusive peers.

That might be one reason why employees are 60% more likely to give extra when every employee can receive special recognition for their work. As more employees have the opportunity to take risks and contribute new ideas, regardless of outcome, the number of employees going above and beyond in the organization increases.

Another key driver? Having meaningful work makes employees 50% more likely to give extra. Again, innovation often provides employees the chance to have a tangible impact, and become more connected to the deeper mission of an organization.

There are plenty of other factors responsible for these experiences in the workplace, Lewis-Kulin warns. However, for companies looking to revitalize their culture, these can be good places to start.