Examining the ROI on Human Fulfillment
We open on a crisp Manhattan morning: executives from across the financial sector fidget in the seats of a sleek conference hall overlooking Central Park. The occasion is yet another symposium on “cultivating company culture,” a nebulous concept which gets stuck in the heads of corporate business bros like a certain Mariah Carey song between the months of November and January. The keynote speaker, a former tech CEO turned consultant, is playing the lead in today’s performance. He takes center stage with practiced enthusiasm, and Act One commences.
“Culture,” his monologue begins, “is the secret sauce your business needs.” The audience nods, enraptured, as though witnessing a profound revelation rather than an aphorism that has graced the pages of “Forbes” so frequently it might as well be the magazine’s tagline.
For the better part of the last decade, “company culture” has been elevated to near-mythic status in the corporate realm — presented as the alchemical element that transmutes struggling enterprises into unicorns and transforms ordinary workplaces into talent magnets. The script, we’re told, is deceptively simple: foster trust, nurture enthusiasm, and cultivate commitment from your team members. The stage direction? Demonstrate to employees that their contributions matter — that their labor serves a purpose transcending the mundane pursuit of quarterly profits.
All of this, of course, in service of the dramatic Act Two reveal: the true motivation was quarterly profit all along! The dramatic irony is palpable, if not particularly subtle.
It becomes difficult to suspend disbelief and buy into the performance when someone earning a multiple of your salary — likely performing work that is simultaneously less taxing and more rewarding — schedules quarterly “wellness check-ins” to inquire about your mental state. Their transparency is almost admirable. They freely admit these sessions exist primarily because content employees are more productive; they boost metrics and secure performance bonuses for their managers.
To be fair, given the choice between a company that makes even performative efforts toward cultivating a supportive environment and one that demonstrates callous indifference to its cast and crew, the former is obviously preferable. There exist virtuous managers who genuinely strive to create workplaces conducive to both profitability and personal fulfillment. They deserve recognition, perhaps in the form of a motivational desk ornament, or a “#1 Boss” mug.
Perhaps you have one of these managers, and they would lend an ear when you’re down. Lovely. Would they do your job, or is it beneath them? How much better would your day-to-day be if you had their job? Are you being paid less for a job that is harder and less gratifying?
When the answers are “no, a lot, and yes,” how sincere can their concern for your well-being possibly be? If they actually wanted you to be well and satisfied and content, they would distribute money more equally and make sure everyone shares the most difficult and unpleasant tasks. But they don’t, because they don’t actually want employees to be happy. They want them to be docile.
The critical standard is remarkably low if we give raving reviews to managers for simply recognizing their employees as both profit-generators and people deserving of comfort and fulfillment. A manager can sincerely believe their culture-building initiatives benefit both the company’s bottom line and their employees’ sense of purpose, while simultaneously treating human contentment as just another exploitable resource — no different from intellectual property or capital equipment. It takes more than recognizing a person’s humanity to overcome the omnipresent reality that employee satisfaction is a corporate asset—one that is maintained precisely to the extent that it generates returns for shareholders.
(In a fourth wall-breaking aside to the audience, the narrator makes a plea: “I can hear the critics shouting, ‘Socialist! Radical!’ Is it truly radical to question the return on investment of human fulfillment? To resist the commodification of one’s wholeness of self?” The hecklers’ answer is predictable as the narrator retreats to the safety of the wings.)
Corporate rhetoric describes successful cultures as those that nurture employee development and operate on foundations of mutual respect and trust. Yet this narrative rings hollow when the architects of these values wouldn’t consider performing the unpleasant tasks delegated to those occupying the lower rungs of the organizational ladder. How does one maintain composure during earnest discussions about “the company family” shortly after scrubbing bathroom facilities, while those granted infinitely greater resources for personal comfort spend their afternoons “in meetings”— corporate shorthand that might encompass anything from actual strategic planning to leisurely networking at the local country club?
The irony compounds when we consider compensation structures. Executives receive premium salaries for performing work that is inherently more intellectually stimulating and personally fulfilling. They navigate the realms of strategy and vision — the work we find most rewarding — while commanding compensation packages that might exceed eight figures. Meanwhile, those tasked with the most physically demanding, repetitive, or unpleasant functions often struggle to secure wages sufficient for basic necessities.
(An underpaid lighting tech pans the spotlight upstage, where an uncredited actor making union minimum outlines a hypothetical):
Say I gave you an array of tasks you could complete, and any of them would be rewarded with $1,000. You could spend eight hours sitting through meetings, schmoozing clients over drinks, and balancing a spreadsheet (maybe tack on an extra hour to figure out how Excel works); that, or you could spend eight hours dealing with every complaint that a customer calls in with, or you could clean every surface in every room of an office building, or you could wash 8,000 cafeteria trays.
I bet I know which one you’d pick.
Yet these obviously less desirable roles command the lowest wages, while those performing them are expected to show gratitude for the mere opportunity to be part of the production — to keep from biting the hand that feeds them crumbs from the corporate dinner table.
When the same organization that speaks reverentially about its cultural values maintains such stark disparities in both the nature of work and its compensation, the discourse around company culture becomes the most elaborate, condescending form of theater — ornate and meticulously crafted, but ultimately an artificial construct designed to obscure uncomfortable realities.
Perhaps a more honest script would acknowledge the fundamentally transactional nature of corporate culture. An even better script might go further and change the nature of the transaction altogether: organizations might provide compensation for profit-generating labor commensurate with the difficulty and desirability of the work. In other words, the actor playing the most unpleasant, exhausting, and difficult role gets top billing, regardless of stage time or star power. The cultural elements that humanize this exchange — the birthday celebrations, the team-building retreats, and the wellness initiatives — may indeed improve the production value, but they don’t change the words on the page or the notes in the air.
How do we, normal people, use this information? If you are in a job interview and their main selling point is a vibrant and supportive company culture, question it. Is it a for-profit organization with shareholders and investors? Are managers receiving bonuses based on the performance of their subordinates? What is the pay disparity from the c-suite to the bottom of the corporate pyramid? If these answers don’t align with the enthusiastic, employee-focused company culture being described, then don’t be surprised when their interest in your well-being is less than advertised — or when it ceases to be a priority the moment your health and wellness become financially inconvenient.
As the conference in Manhattan concludes, attendees file out clutching branded playbills filled with strategies for “authentic culture building.” Outside, the stagehands begin striking the set: clearing coffee cups and arranging chairs for tomorrow’s performance. The contrast between those who take bows and those who run the lights is neither subtle nor novel, yet it persists as the unacknowledged counterpoint to corporate America’s most cherished mythology—that beneath the profit motive lies something more meaningful, more human. With the house lights up, the truth may be less inspirational: culture, like everything else in business, is just another prop in a highly profitable production.
