Global Workplace Culture: January 2025 EN:Insights Forum

For the first EN:Insights Forum of the year, the topic was the state of global workplace culture. In addition to SHRM’s new research on The State of Global Workplace Culture in 2024, published in December, Forum members heard from Njsane Courtney, SHRM-SCP, vice president of human resources at the American Bureau of Shipping.

Globally, workplace culture is a key driver of employee retention, noted Ragan Decker, Ph.D., manager of executive network and enterprise research at SHRM. 

“SHRM Thought Leadership approached workplace culture from a global perspective to provide insights into cultural similarities and differences, helping multinational organizations tailor strategies for a diverse workforce,” Decker said. “U.S.-based companies can also benefit by identifying universal drivers of workplace culture, benchmarking U.S. results against similar countries, and strengthening their competitiveness in a global landscape.”

Here are four critical insights from the research.

Research Insight 1: Across the globe, most workers rate culture positively but not equally. 

How global workers rate their workplace culture:

• Good or excellent: 56% 
• Slightly good: 26%
• Slightly poor: 10%
• Poor: 8%

Top three countries who rate their workplace culture as good or excellent:

• India: 79% 
• United Arab Emirates: 69%
• Egypt: 67%

Bottom three countries who rate their workplace culture as good or excellent:

• South Korea: 45% 
• France: 43%
• Japan: 31%

“Although the U.S. doesn’t rank in the top three or the bottom three, it does stand out positively, with 61% of U.S. workers rating their culture as good or excellent, which surpasses the global average of 56%,” Decker said.

Research Insight 2: Executives tend to rate their organizational culture more favorably than individual contributors across the globe. The gap between how executives rate their culture as good or excellent versus the percentage of individual contributors varies widely from one country to another. 

Culture perception gap between executives and workers:

• United Arab Emirates: 8 percentage points
• India: 10 percentage points
• United States: 25 percentage points
• Australia: 27 percentage points
• Saudi Arabia: 27 percentage points
• Brazil: 28 percentage points
• France: 31 percentage points
• Singapore: 31 percentage points
• Mexico: 31 percentage points
• Egypt: 38 percentage points
• China: 45 percentage points

“While this disparity is certainly not the highest for the U.S., it does suggest that there is a disconnect between those in leadership positions and those on the front lines of the organization,” Decker said.

Research Insight 3: It’s no surprise that a positive workplace culture helps retain talent while a poor culture drives turnover. SHRM’s new research found that workers in positive cultures are nearly four times more likely to stay with their current employer than those in poor cultures.  

Top reasons workers are seeking to leave a poor or terrible culture:

• Poor manager: 54% of workers surveyed
• Unfair treatment: 54% of workers surveyed
• Inadequate pay: 54% of workers surveyed
• Lack of empathetic leadership: 47% of workers surveyed
• Insufficient regard for employee well-being: 47% of workers surveyed                                                           

“Among workers seeking to leave, inadequate pay is the only one of the five major factors not attributed to workplace culture,” Decker said. “However, each of these issues can be addressed by cultivating a positive workplace culture.”

Research Insight 4: SHRM’s new research identified five universal elements that can contribute to a positive culture across countries, regardless of location.

Five universal drivers that cultivate positive workplace cultures:

1. Honest and unbiased management. 
2. Civil behavior.
3. Meaningful work and opportunities.
4. Open communication.
5. Empathy.

“It’s important to note that each of these drivers plays an equally significant role in fostering a positive workplace,” Decker said. “Therefore, creating a truly positive culture requires addressing all of these aspects.” 

Key research takeaways:

1. Global insights are important for all organizations.                                                                                                
2. Workplace culture perceptions differ by country.
3. Leaders and individual contributors see workplace culture differently.
4. A positive workplace culture retains talent.
5. Use the five universal pillars to build a positive workplace culture.

“Focus on the five universal pillars to build a positive workplace culture regardless of where in the world you may operate,” Decker said. 

Njsane Courtney: The Power of Open Communication and Empathy

“Like a lot of HR people, when my third-grade teacher asked, ‘What do you want to be?’ I didn’t say, ‘HR.’ I got my start in personnel in the military,” Courtney told January’s EN:Insights Forum. “I really enjoy getting the best out of people. The military is about getting the best out of your soldiers, so they can perform their best on the field. On the civilian side, it’s the same thing.” 

After mustering out of the army as a first lieutenant, Courtney worked for Pacific Drilling, Champion Technologies, AIG, and others before joining the American Bureau of Shipping in 2013, where he’s been vice president of HR for more than three years. He earned an MBA from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is a founding member of Hacking HR’s Expert Council, and holds a SHRM-SCP certification.

Here are a few excerpts from Courtney’s comments during the January 2025 EN:Insights Forum.

Of the fundamental drivers of a positive workplace culture identified in the research, is there one or two that resonate with you?

There were two that stuck out. No. 1 is open communication, and the second one is empathy.

Open communication is something that’s hard to come by these days, especially when you compare the messaging that senior leadership delivers and how that message is received by the front-line workers. And then empathy—I think empathy is something that’s really missing in a lot of conversations. 

We’re very focused on KPIs and metrics. And look, don’t get me wrong, those things are very important. But at the end of the day, in terms of how we deal with people, how we get the best out of our people, and how we deal with situations, we could use a little sprinkle of empathy.

What consideration should we be giving to different cultures and the acceptability of negative feedback in that culture?

Anybody who’s worked with folks in Germany knows that beating around the bush doesn’t work well. As a matter of fact, the more you use subtle nuances such as the compliment sandwich, in some cultures, that’s seen as a level of dishonesty. But in other places, such as the Middle East and parts of Asia, saving face is huge, so feedback there might come through subtle nuances, not the hard feedback that we give here in the States. 

I remember a manager who had an expat assignment in Tokyo where he had an employee who was not performing. This manager isn’t a hard-nosed individual, but he used that direct, Americanized style, and it didn’t work out well because the individual felt disrespected and that they had lost face. There should be significant consideration given to the culture if you manage or lead teams in other countries to recognize whether indirect or direct feedback is the most appropriate measure.  

How do open communication and empathy contribute to creating a thriving workplace culture and strong employee loyalty?

As leaders, we make grandiose strategic statements and say, “Here’s our vision.” We love using the words “strategy” and “synergy,” things like that. But do we validate that the messaging from the top resonates with those individuals who are doing the work? We tend to communicate with peers. If you’re a VP, most of your meetings tend to be with other VPs or directors, but not a lot of time is spent finding out whether the messaging reaches the front-line employees.

In terms of empathy, you would think there’s an empathy warehouse somewhere, that there’s a limited supply of empathy and we have to pass it out sparingly. There needs to be more emphasis from leaders around the globe about having empathy and more open dialogue, because it does build trust and loyalty. 

If you don’t talk to me, how can I trust you? 

Is there a correlation between workplace culture and having a clearly communicated and demonstrated company mission, vision, and set of values? 

There is a correlation because if you can’t clearly communicate what your vision, mission, strategy, and values are, then how is that going to resonate? Some companies make these pie-in-the-sky pronouncements, and then you compound that with the inability to correlate that to what my job is and how my job contributes to the overall mission of the organization.

When you have a culture that not only has a clear and defined mission, but also leaders who can communicate how your job—what you do Monday through Friday, eight to five—contributes to that mission, you can create a culture and a partnership. It becomes less about individuals working at their cubicle to having people realize that what they are doing contributes to the overall mission of the organization.

If you can clearly communicate your vision and values and make sure it is communicated all the way through the organization, it can have a massive, massive impact on the company culture. 

What role does civil behavior play in creating a positive workplace culture?

It’s the foundation for everything. Regardless of where you work, we have lost the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. We’ve gotten to the point where everything has to be one way or another, and that if I concede or make concessions, that’s perceived as weakness. At one point, every MBA course taught you about the art of negotiation and that you give some to win some. We’ve lost that, and now we’ve got a level of incivility. 

Think about the word “company.” We call our organizations a company, and I believe that’s because it’s the company that we keep. We’re a company of human beings. If we can’t be civil in basic conversations, then we will never feel safe. We’ll never feel safe to volunteer ideas. We’ll never feel safe to be innovative. We’ll never feel safe to bring our whole selves to work. We won’t feel safe to look out for each other because we’re not confident that person next to us will have our back, because we can’t even be civil as a group of managers. 

What would be the one takeaway that you’ve learned along your journey?

People matter. I know that’s a cliche, but people matter. When companies say, “People are our most valuable asset,” I am convinced that a lot of companies have no clue what they’re talking about. We often use people as resources and not assets. A resource is meant to be exploited and used and then put away on a shelf. An asset is meant to be invested in to get a return on investment.

Employee fulfillment, career fulfillment, and business objectives do not have to be mutually exclusive. We can make both happen. It just takes a little bit of empathy and a little bit of consideration, and the managerial courage to talk to our employees and give them the straight, honest truth and form the collaborative relationships so that our people can bring the best to the table.

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