The Great Resignation trend is scrambling the American workplace at a record pace. Beleaguered business leaders are doling out dollars by the boatload to keep their employees on the job and to attract new ones. But that might not be the right approach.

A toxic corporate culture could be 10 times more powerful than compensation when it comes to predicting who will stay and who will go. MIT Sloan Management Review just published a study that analyzed 34 million employee profiles of workers who left their jobs for any reason between April and September 2021. It also looked at 1.4 million Glassdoor reviews from the past few years, including before the pandemic. The survey revealed that salaries rank 16th on a list of topics predicting employee turnover. Number one is toxic corporate culture.

The workplace becomes toxic, the Management Review argues, when there is a failure to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; workers feel disrespected; unethical behavior occurs; or a cutthroat environment persists. Top study author and MIT Sloan senior lecturer Donald Sull notes that a toxic workplace leads to more people quitting than any other bad work issue.