MIT Sloan Management Review has announced 2020’s ‘standout’ Culture Champions. This year’s winning firms excel across a range of cultural issues that matter most to their staff, such as diversity and inclusion (D&I), integrity, respect, collaboration and innovation.
As well as excelling culturally, the Culture Champions tend to outperform their industry peers financially. They are also more than twice as likely to be led by a woman than a typical Fortune 500 company. In fact, five of the 21 Culture Champions have either a female CEO (Accenture, CDW, The Clorox Company) or chairwoman (Bain, St. Jude Children’s Hospital). Additionally, they cultivate “remarkably psychologically safe environments for their employees”, highlights the study.
The 21 champions include Accenture, Bain & Company, BlackRock, Boston Scientific, Bristol Myers Squibb, CDW, Chick-fil-A, The Clorox Company, Cummins, Discount Tire, Hilton, HP Inc, HubSpot, Mastercard, Netflix, Nvidia, Nordstrom, St Jude Children’s Hospital, Toyota North America, Trader Joe’s and Ultimate Software.
Commenting on the honour, Accenture’s CEO Julie Sweet stated: “A culture of shared success is critical for who we want to be and what we want to do as a company. By embracing inclusion, diversity and equality, we can attract the very best talent, unlock greater collaboration and innovation, and create value that benefits all of our stakeholders. We are honoured to be recognised by the Culture 500 for our commitment.”
EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION
“Culture Champions are the unicorns of today’s business world,” according to Glassdoor’s Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain. “Of the hundreds of companies we studied, only the most remarkable 3.5% were selected; an elite group of employers who have cultivated a rich, multidimensional culture that delivers both on employee satisfaction and business results.”
These Culture Champions “walk the talk, unlike most companies we have studied, including some of the biggest household name companies”, added the report’s author and lead researcher, Donald Sull.
CULTURAL EXCELLENCE
The “groundbreaking” study scientifically compares the corporate cultures of more than 500 of the largest companies driving the US economy thanks to over 1.4 million Glassdoor employee reviews. In addition to naming the Culture Champions, the Culture 500 also recognises excellence across nine specific cultural categories. They include D&I, integrity, respect, innovation, agility, collaboration, customer orientation, performance and execution.
The study found that Cummins ranked top for D&I as its employees spoke most favourably about those initiatives on Glassdoor. It rated Rockwell Automation top for integrity; Ultimate Software for respect; Nvidia for innovation and agility; and Bain & Company for collaboration. Bristol Myers Squibb scored well for customer orientation. Paycom for performance and Hubspot for execution.
The Culture 500 study also allows users to compare cultures to see which values staff at a particular company talk about the most and least. Click here for more details on the rankings.
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