SHRM26 Debrief · Modern Employee Experience · #2535
Culture is King: Laying a Strong People Foundation for Business Success
with Theresa Hummel-Krallinger
"What gets tolerated tells us what the organization actually believes."
What it was about
Culture (the values, beliefs, and behaviors that determine how things get done at a company) is more decisive than strategy for business success. HR practitioners have far more power to build and protect it, as 'guardian of the soul' and 'conscience for leaders,' than they usually give themselves credit for.
By the numbers
51% turnover in a year
case study pharmaceutical company's annual turnover rate that prompted the speaker's culture-turnaround initiative
top five reasons people leave: unhealthy culture (No. 1); top five reasons people stay: healthy culture (No. 3)
cited from 'a recent survey' on turnover/retention drivers
18 months
time it took the case-study company to control turnover and win a 'Best Place to Work Philadelphia' award
Key notes
- Ask every job candidate or new hire, 'How is your performance measured?' — if they can't answer, it's a red flag about clarity of expectations in the culture.
- Audit your organization's culture attributes and mark each as something HR can just do, can influence, or genuinely cannot control — most items land in the first two buckets.
- Reframe exit interviews: instead of only asking 'why are people leaving,' ask 'why are people staying' and build a compelling, controllable reason to stay.
The contrarian takeInstead of asking the standard exit-interview question 'why are people leaving,' HR should focus on the more useful and controllable question 'why are people staying,' since most reasons for leaving are outside the organization's control while reasons to stay are not.
Take this back Monday
Do this for your team
Ask every new hire how their performance is measured; if they can't answer, fix that clarity gap before it festers.
Say this in your next leadership meeting
Culture beats strategy because what we tolerate, not our values statement, tells employees what we actually believe.
Watch out for
- Promoting technically strong employees into management roles without giving them the different skill set management requires ('lighting a candle and saying a prayer and wishing them well').
- Treating mission, vision, and values as 'words on a mug' rather than behaviors that are actively modeled, rewarded, and reinforced.
- Tolerating 'brilliant jerks' or bad behavior from top performers, tenured staff, or leadership family members because they're otherwise valuable.
Fun fact · Theresa Hummel-Krallinger
She's an Emmy Award-winning producer, a Wharton CHRO Program grad, and a moonlighting stand-up comedian.
If this landed, see these
↳ Go deeperThe EX - Moments That Matter: Designing Interactions That Drive Trust and BelongingBuilds culture-as-decisive-force into a moment-by-moment design system for trust and belonging.⇄ The counterpointThe Nirvana Fix for Retention & Engagement Is First-Line Leader AccountabilityNarrows 'culture beats strategy' down to one lever: trust in the direct manager.✦ The unexpected oneFair Pay, Smart Tech: Using AI + HI to Design Equitable and Transparent Compensation SystemsSame trust argument, applied to pay: transparency there beats strategy on culture too.