A global executive survey shows talent retention and employee wellbeing topping leadership priorities in 2026, while company culture ranks last
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Senior business leaders rank talent retention and employee wellbeing as top priorities in 2026, but place organizational culture dead last on their internal priority list.
One wonders whether the ironic contradiction is somehow lost on them.
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According to the 2026 View from the C-Suite executive research survey, published by The Adecco Group’s LHH and ICEO units, which draws on perspectives from more than 2,531 executives globally, talent retention is the top internal priority this year. Employee well-being is in third place. And company culture ranks at the very bottom of the 12-item list.
This seems operationally impossible, trying to improve outcomes while ignoring the systems producing them.
“While retention and employee wellbeing rank among the top internal challenges, our Insights@Work research shows that leaders are ultimately focused on cost control and revenue growth,” said Tami Nutt, vice president of research at Jumpstart HR Research.
“Culture rarely shows up in that conversation in a measurable way, so it gets separated from the priorities that matter most,” Nutt said. “That’s where the gap is.”
Revenue and profit fluctuate. Culture compounds.
“Company culture is a critical people-first part of any organization that helps it thrive long-term,” said Marc Stefanski, chairman and CEO of Third Federal Savings and Loan. “It takes much longer for company culture to be exceptional and sustained than it does for it to be profitable.”
“Some may argue that culture is hard to measure directly, but the results are considerable, and we know it works,” Stefanski said. “More than 15% of our associates have been with us for 25 years or more. Our annual turnover is about 4%. We are staffed with about one-third the number of associates of other banks our size, and our productivity and profits exceed most metrics. That is commitment. That is strength. And that is a testament to the fact that a focus on company culture pays dividends.
“Culture isn’t separate from retention. It’s a business imperative.”
We’re in the midst of ongoing change where we have the ability to make cultural change visible in operational terms, Nutt said.
“Recognition platforms like Workhuman are creating structured data around how work happens: who contributes, how teams collaborate, and which behaviors are reinforced,” Nutt said. “That data can be tied to outcomes like engagement, retention, and performance.
Nutt also mentioned Organizational Network Analysis solutions for mapping how work gets done.
“That makes it possible to see where collaboration is accelerating performance or where it’s breaking down in ways that impact results,” she said. “And platforms like Plum surface how people think, solve problems, and make decisions, so organizations can align talent more effectively and apply those decisions more consistently.
“Taken together, these approaches turn culture into something observable and measurable. They connect how work is experienced day-to-day with the outcomes leaders care about.
Retention and wellbeing don’t improve in isolation. They improve when the system behind them — how decisions are made, how work flows, and how people are supported — is consistent and aligned to business goals.”
“This paradox exists because the majority of leaders view culture as something that is not tied to day-to-day operations; they view it as something that is more conceptual than practical,” said John Karsant, founder and CEO of LevelUp Leads, a B2B sales development agency.
“Retention and employee well-being can both be evaluated from clear outputs, such as turnover and how well or poorly someone is performing, and burnout,” Karsant said. “However, culture has usually been reduced to an organization’s ‘core values’ written down on a slide and/or the occasional initiative that has been implemented, making it feel less important and more difficult to act upon.
“In reality, culture is what drives both employee retention and employee well-being. Culture will show itself in how expectations are established, how feedback is delivered, how performance is managed, and how consistent the workplace experience is for employees every day. In order to ensure that you can improve retention and employee well-being in a sustainable manner, you must first ensure that you specifically address the underlying systems that contributed to the issues in the first place.”
These leaders are likely the furthest thing from dumb. They’re simply responding to what they can see, measure, and justify. Which creates a dangerous blind spot.
Tom Parling, founder of Growthvibe, an AI-native Answer Engine Optimization firm, said retention is easy to track. Culture, not so much.
“It comes with hard numbers like turnover rates, exit interviews, and salary benchmarks,” he said. “Culture, on the other hand, is hard to measure until it actually starts to break.”
“Culture is an ecosystem, not an edict,” said Zachary Wagner, founder of Narrative Strategy, a leadership development and consulting firm.
“Culture got rebranded as HR’s problem,” he said. “It became perks, programs, and Slack $WORK channels. Real culture — how people treat each other when no one’s watching — got buried.”
Most leaders just pour energy into wellness perks and bonuses “while the underlying soil stays dry,” Parling said.
“The thing is, perks are just fertilizer on dead ground,” he said. “You can offer all the free lunches and yoga classes you want, but people will still leave the moment they feel unseen or burnt out.”
Leaders should work to make culture operational.
Stefanski recommends engaging with employees in meaningful conversation, and to be visible and present.
Parling shared his team’s 15-minute team check-in, where each person shares one win and one block they’re dealing with.
“No status updates about hours worked,” he said. “That simple practice builds trust faster than any ping-pong table ever could. Leaders can try to retain talent without fixing the culture, but that only works until the first hard week hits. That’s when people leave for someone who treats them like humans rather than just another retention stat.”
“Strong cultures are created by top level leaders who practice integrity in their behaviors,” said Jennifer McKenna, a management consultant and executive coach. “In other words, their thoughts, words, and actions reflect the values they purport. They also intentionally build organizations that incentivize a reflection of that integrity in leaders and employees at all levels.”
McKenna offered an example of a company creating a reward system (promotions, bonuses, raises, etc.) set up to create internal competition while its leaders are preaching the importance of collaboration.
The lack of alignment will always negatively affect in-house culture, she said.
“Over time employees won’t care how much they are being paid if they believe that they are working in an environment that causes confusion and conflict and doesn’t practice what it preaches.”
“Retention is a lagging metric. Culture is the leading one,” Wagner said. “By the time someone quits, the decision was made 12 months earlier.
“Culture work requires vulnerability most executives have spent careers avoiding. You can't delegate it. It demands the leader be different in real time.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the sample size of the 2026 View from the C-Suite report. It was based on a survey of 2,531 executives, not more than 4,600 executives.
