Turnover ... a potential indicator of longevity?

I think there's a lot of lottery-playing going on right now. Companies staffing up, raising a bunch of money, hiring a bunch of people, and burning them out in the hopes that they'll hit the lottery. ...all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they're all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don't matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a whole, you'll rarely see stories about treating customers well, about people building a sustainable business. ...I don't know what percentage of tech companies have been around 30 years.

In this article from Fast Company, co-founder of 37 Signals Jason Fried, talks about building a sustainable business, in it for the long haul. He decries the tech start-up culture of burning out and churning though employees.

After reading it I was left wondering: could rates of employee turnover be an indicator of long term viability and success?

Culture eats strategy for lunch

Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It's not intangible or fluffy, it's not a vibe or the office décor. It's one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success. It's not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death. Think about it like a nurturing habitat for success. Culture cannot be manufactured. It has to be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Ignoring the health of your culture is like letting aquarium water get dirty.

Read the whole article over at http://www.fastcompany.com/1810674/culture-eats-strategy-for-lunch

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