How can you measure your company culture?

We can get close to measuring culture, but I don't think we'll truly ever be able to in a way that's valuable. Some companies use eNPS (employee net promoter score) to gauge overall happiness, and it is a good high-level indicator overtime and to see when it drops and spikes. But ultimately you're measuring happiness, and with this OneVest metric, you're focusing on retention; both get at the core of whether or not culture's doing its job but that doesn't really mean it's "measuring culture". Liked the perspective though, thanks for sharing this!

It's hard to come up with a universal indicator, because different situations require different cultures.

Examples:

- Some companies have incubation models - small teams trying new things. If they work, they grow. If not, everyone leaves as things wind down.

- Services heavy firms have higher turnover than pure product companies. (It's hard being a service employee)

- Same with sales heavy cultures.

- If you're a great employer in Des Moines (Iowa) you'll have less turnover than Silicon Valley.

I love metrics, and struggle with this a lot. A couple signs:

- Why do people leave? (Money? To become a teacher?)

- Do you have to pay more than the competition?

- How many of your A players recruit their best friends?

- Do customers want to be employees?

- Do ex-employees want to become customers?

Very hard to benchmark!