Ascensi

Culture and management quality aren't soft metrics — they're either compounding assets or quiet liabilities on your P&L.
Global engagement just hit a 5-year low, and manager engagement fell faster than almost anything else Gallup tracks. In Romania specifically, we're seeing something stranger: high engagement, but turnover running nearly double the European average.
We break down the two mechanisms behind it — mis-hires and undertrained managers — and why both look rational from inside the pressure that causes them.
Full breakdown 👇

https://www.ascensi.ro/en/blog/is-your-culture-an-asset-or-a-liability-on-your-balance-sheet

Is Your Culture an Asset or a Liability on Your Balance Sheet? Culture & management aren’t soft metrics. They’re either compounding assets that lower growth costs, or quiet liabilities eroding your margins every unmeasured quarter.

Hot take: your HR team isn't too expensive. It's just being used wrong. 🙃

Most companies treat HR like a fire extinguisher - ignored until something's burning.

But here's what that quiet neglect actually costs:
💸 Bad C-suite hire? Up to 213% of their salary. Gone.
😶 Quiet quitting spreading? That's culture rot on your P&L.
📉 5% more turnover? Millions out the door before anyone notices.

In 2026, the real competitive edge isn't your tech stack, but it's who's operating it.

The smartest CEOs we talk to have stopped asking "who can we cut?" and started asking "how do we build a team that actually scales?"

That's the shift from HR as a cost center → HR as a profit engine. And it's kind of our whole thing at Ascensi. 👋

We just dropped our first article on exactly this.

Read the full breakdown here: https://www.ascensi.ro/en/blog/boardroom-strategy-pivoting-hr-from-cost-center-to-profit-engine

What's your take — is HR still seen as "back office" where you work? Let us know below! 👇