Employee turnover is totally normal for businesses but high turnover rates can become problematic if managers do nothing. A high churn rate does not only increase operational inefficiencies and costs of staff training, it lowers employees’ morale and eventually cripples productivity. The negative impact of bad workplace culture is enormous. According to 2023 insights from FinancesOnline, nearly 19 million Americans quit their jobs or change occupation every year. A report from the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics also confirmed that employee separations in 2021 reached 5.5 million due to massive resignations, transfers, retirements, layoffs, and contract terminations. Voluntary employee turnover between 2018 and 2022 was two million per year, and 45% of the employees resigned within one year or less, Work Institute noted. In 2022, LinkedIn released turnover insights across different industries, noting that professional services (13.4%) followed by tech and media organizations (12.9) have the highest churn rates. Although individuals with high-level media communication skills have high demand in the globalized industry, their counterparts in engineering roles have an above-average turnover rate because tech business leaders have growing concerns that productivity is not relative to the size of workforce. This implies that there are opportunities in the global media industry, specifically for top-performers, so organizational culture determines their decision to stay with an organization or leave. For example, U.S.-based remote jobs on LinkedIn attract over 50% applications despite a fact that paid remote jobs make up only 20% of all paid jobs.

A strong and healthy corporate culture increases overall performance because it brings people together, fosters effort and engagement, supports creativity, and prioritizes employee welfare (Harney, 2023). So, organizations with a strong culture often have employee-centred policies, effective leadership structures, robust control mechanisms, and responsive communication channels for promoting values and norms. Leaders in organizations implementing a strong, healthy culture focus on instilling corporate values in employees and applying constructive pressure to achieve common purpose. But without establishing a clear set of values, it would be difficult for any leader to achieve group conformity. On the other hand, nothing disrupts employee motivation, engagement, and productivity like when individuals and groups within the workforce feel underappreciated (Gabriel et al, 2022).

Evidentiary data indicates that the employment crisis between organizations and employees favour the latter because they have culture-related information (available on job review websites) that influences their choice of companies (Uyar et al, 2022). Moreover, there is scarcity of skilled workforce, and this employment challenge increases options for experienced individuals, so innovative organizations are offering attractive benefits, flexible work schedules, and a fair rewarding system to attract and retain best talent. According to 2023 Statista insights, the global media industry could attract $1.43 trillion as revenues by the end of 2023, with $0.70 trillion accruing from the market’s largest segments—television and video streaming. In 2027, 61% of total revenues from the media industry will most likely come from digital media. Globally, the United States—followed by China, Japan, Germany, and the UK—remains an industry leader with $477.90 billion expected by the end of 2023 (Lee et al, 2022).

The media industry is UK’s biggest market. With £97 billion earned from advertising, the fast-growing industry is expected to grow by 4% in 2028, according to PWC. Thus, digital investment and business strategy are crucial to sustaining competitiveness, but media organizations like the BBC should reassess its plans to create a stronger connection with stakeholders, especially customers and employees. Studies show that companies with a weak culture continuously lose top-performers to competitors (Tkachenko et al, 2022). Employee dissatisfaction could be a result of non-inclusion on decision making, stress from heavy workloads and toxic managers, or unhealthy workplace relationships. According to Xu et al (2022), people leave organizations when there is no job security, job satisfaction, team collaboration, and a sense of purpose. A high turnover can signify the existence of bigger problems, too. For example, when employees feel undervalued because salaries are below industry average and there are no health benefits (or welfare packages are not impressive), the level of motivation nosedives with a significant curve. The rate of turnover also increases when organizational culture does not support professional development, thus, the business outlook for global media industry is volatile and uncertain—a reason the BBC needs tech=powered, human-oriented approach to creating and achieving sustainable goals (Mozaffan et al, 2022).