Mike Andes argues that company culture is a powerful tool for attracting, onboarding, training, and retaining talent—especially for small businesses that cannot match the wages and formal benefits of larger, publicly traded companies. He frames culture as a competitive advantage that smaller firms can leverage when cash compensation and formal systems are weaker.
A culture can attract great talent, every single level, attracting the person, training them up. So onboarding them, getting them started, and then retaining them in the long term, culture is a massive driving indicator of that. And a lot of times it's very easy to point at compensation or other aspects of the business for the team member, but it's a whole lot harder to attract talent if you can't afford the wages of bigger competitors. And for the vast majority of small businesses that are doing under $50 million in annual revenue, it's difficult to compete with the wages of publicly traded companies that can have great benefits and a whole lot of other really great compensation plans, and a very clear hierarchy. And things are in systems and procedures. But it's also one of your benefits, is that you can have a culture that potentially they can't compete with.
