Picture a leadership meeting. HR reports that people are “basically satisfied.” The engagement survey isn't on fire, nobody's handing in resignations en masse, the hallways are calm. Everyone breathes a little easier. At a time when it's hard to find good people, “satisfaction” is actually pretty good news.
But in another browser tab, something completely different is happening. LinkedIn, job boards, notifications from job portals popping up on phones. And in the employee's head, one question: “Do I want to still be here in two years?”
When we looked at corporate culture at mid-sized and large Czech companies together with agency G82, this dual picture came into sharp focus. Calm on the surface. A quiet drain of loyalty and performance underneath.
Satisfied, but already halfway out the door
Let's start with a number that genuinely unsettled us: only 13% of people in our sample truly feel like part of the company. That's the group that feels “this is our business.”
And then a second number: roughly one in three employees is actively considering changing jobs. Not “sometime in a vague future,” but right here, right now.
When we put these results together with the rest of the data, a pattern began to emerge: people report relatively decent satisfaction, but their engagement and loyalty are far more fragile than they appear at first glance.
Our engagement index came out at 54 out of 100 points. That's not a disaster. But it's not a result you'd want to see either, if your company has ambitions to grow and handle the changes still ahead of it.
If we translate this index into the language of performance, a conservative estimate comes out to roughly 5% of the company's capacity going unused. In an organization of 5,000 people, that's like 250 people sitting in front of a switched-off computer. Physically present, on the payroll too, but their potential never makes it into the company's results.
What's holding employees back: corporate culture as mediocre fuel
We often hear the line: “Our corporate culture is our competitive advantage.” It looks great in presentations. It sounds great on stickers and in employer branding too.
But when we asked employees whether corporate culture positively affects their personal productivity, we got a rating of around 50 points out of 100. That's a pretty weak argument for the claim that culture at that company is an “engine of performance.”
Likewise, the statement “Corporate culture is our competitive advantage” landed somewhere in the middle of the scale. What people are telling us is: yes, culture exists, it functions somehow, but we don't see in it what management claims about it.
And perhaps the most telling response was to the statement: “Thanks to our corporate culture, talented new employees apply to work with us.” Here we land near the bottom of the scale. To put it bluntly: in people's eyes, corporate culture doesn't play much of a role in either recruiting or retention. It's present, but it's not an active player.
Two realities within one company
One thing that caught our attention in the research is the difference in how different groups of people perceive corporate culture.
Managers who have direct reports rate most attributes of the culture considerably higher. They're more likely to say culture supports performance, that leadership actively invests in it, that it helps retain top people.
Employees without direct reports, on the other hand, are systematically more critical. They're less likely to believe corporate culture makes their work easier. They're more likely to say processes complicate their lives rather than help them deliver results.
Put simply: the closer you are to the board, the more positively you see the culture. The closer you are to day-to-day operations, the more you see it as an obstacle.
A similar pattern shows up with company size too. Smaller organizations (under 100 people) come out ahead on a number of indicators: relationships, atmosphere, a sense of purpose. With every additional layer of hierarchy and every new process, that advantage slowly dissolves.
That doesn't mean a large company can't have a great culture. But it does mean it has to work much more deliberately to keep its corporate culture from getting lost in spreadsheets, policies, and endless approval loops.
Loyalty held together by force of habit
When we looked at the results by length of employment, another interesting curve emerged.
In the first two years, ratings of culture and engagement tend to be relatively high. New people arrive with enthusiasm, expecting “this place will be different.”
Around year six, the curve starts to decline. A sense of overload grows, unchangeable processes cause frustration, and there's a growing feeling that extra effort pays off more in a PowerPoint deck than in reality.
Those who stay for a really long time often stay more out of habit than enthusiasm. They know the environment, they know the people, they know how to “get by.” That's not necessarily bad, but it's not exactly a state that prepares a company for another decade of change.
Why this matters right now
You might say: “So what? The results aren't great, but people are fine, the sky isn't falling.” Except we know what era we're operating in. Recruiting good people is hard. There's more change than ever. And any change that affects the business model, the product, or processes depends entirely on whether the people inside the company actually want to carry it through.
When your engagement scores 54 out of 100, it means that:
- some people will get on board,
- a large portion will simply endure the change,
- and the rest will, sooner or later, get up and leave for somewhere else.
From the board's perspective, it's a very simple question: can we afford to have 5% of performance sitting idle, and one in three people thinking about leaving, while we're planning further growth and major changes at the company?
Culture as an operating system, not a bulletin board
At Kogi, we don't think about corporate culture as a “soft topic” that can be delegated to HR and immortalized once a year in an internal campaign.
We see it as the company's operating system. It either makes work easier and speeds up decision-making, or it adds unnecessary costs, slows things down, and kills motivation.
This research gave us a very concrete picture of what that operating system looks like today at mid-sized and large Czech companies. It's not a disaster. But it's not a state that a good strategy should settle for “as is,” either.
If you feel it would be worth taking a similarly sober look at the culture in your own company, we'd be happy to send you the report and walk through with you what it might mean for your business.
Just drop us an email, or reach out to us on LinkedIn.
You might find that some of those “switched-off monitors” just need to be turned back on. And you might also find that it's time to replace the operating system. Before the whole machine slows down.