by Sophie Dommermuth, Junior Consultant

While shifting attitudes and social tensions shape the news cycle and impact profits globally, leaders are seeing the influence of these factors on the engagement and productivity of their workforces. According to Gallup, the global decline in engagement cost the world economy $438 billion in lost productivity in 2024.

In a strained environment where employees seek purpose and employers demand performance, a high-performance culture is emerging as a lever for employee satisfaction and revenue growth.

What is high-performance culture?

High-performance cultures are environments where employees feel motivated and empowered to achieve.

Healthy cultures are developed using approaches which drive productivity on every level, from that of individuals to teams. Employees of organisations with high-performance cultures are empowered to co-create ways of working by taking ownership of their projects and decision making, fostering a workplace where wellbeing and challenge reinforce one another.

Why it matters now

Culture is either a risk or a reward. In volatile markets, the gap between “normal” culture and a high-performance culture can be staggering. Amid economic uncertainty, geopolitical shifts, demographic change, generational transformation, and the rise of AI, culture becomes the element that makes or breaks productivity and profitability.

Per McKinsey, companies that focus on their people’s performance are 4.2 times more likely to outperform their peers, realizing an average 30 percent higher revenue growth and experiencing attrition five percentage points lower, helping businesses with high-performance cultures weather any storm.

What leaders can do

Cultural change stems from good leadership. Leaders play a crucial role by:

1. Sharing a clear and compelling vision: The cultural vision held by leaders should be communicated to all workers consistently. Channels for conversations around culture should be kept open.

2. Being role models by demonstrating the values they would like to see blossom in their organisation: The cultural vision cannot just be explained – it must be done.

3. Ensuring that employees have good work that they find energising: Giving employees meaningful work will keep them on the high-performance path.

Want to know more?

A low-performance culture is one of the many factors that may be holding your organisation back. The BetterWork Navigator 2025 leverages our work with over 200 organisations and a year of global research to reveal what exactly is holding organisations back, and the bold moves like these that organisations can take to build workplace cultures that thrive.