There’s profit in a positive workforce.
As confirmed by both rigorous research and live financial performance, companies with a strong culture and workforce tend to outperform the stock market.
Irrational Capital LLC, an investment research and development firm based in suburban Philadelphia, created an exchange-traded fund index that selects companies based on the strength of the relationship with their employees. The Human Capital Factor® measures the relationship between workplace culture and potential equity performance. Irrational Capital found that when a company gets it right, it’s good for morale and drives a company’s equity value as measured by share price.
The NYSE-listed Harbor Human Capital Factor ETF (HAPI) marked its third anniversary in October. This flagship, large-cap core investment is derived from Irrational Capital’s highest Human Capital Factor® scores. HAPI has beaten more than 90 percent of its peer funds and its benchmark since it launched in October 2022, according to Morningstar as of October 20, 2025.
The Human Capital Factor® appears to be proof that exceptional workforces outperform the market. In backtesting, companies with HCF scores have consistently outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 70 percent over 14 years. These returns have been independently verified by J.P. Morgan Research.
“The HCI [Human Capital Index] exhibits a perfect track record for calendar year performance, outperforming the benchmark in every single year of our sample. While it only did so marginally in three years the overall performance record for this period is stellar. Even in ‘24 YTD, it has managed to outperform a benchmark that has so far returned in excess of 20 percent.”
—JPM’s Quant Research – “US ‘Human Capital Factor’, Still Going Strong” (December 2024)
What employees actually want from their workplace
Irrational Capital incorporates the same employee survey criteria used to recognize Top Workplaces to determine their Human Capital Factor®, and identifies those companies where employees feel valued, appreciated, and motivated; are aligned and have confidence in leadership. This is clear evidence that strong cultures deliver financial rewards.
Khuram Chaudhry, J.P. Morgan’s head of European quantitative strategy, told the Financial Times: “People used to go to work to offer a service to a corporation, and in exchange they would get a salary. But in the past, there was also a community — you would have the church, or you’d have your neighbors. Today what we are asking from the workforce or the company at large is to provide a lot of these services.”
“When employees feel valued, they invest themselves in their employers, which in turn boosts performance,” Keyia Burton, a senior principal with Gartner, a Connecticut research and consulting firm, also told the Financial Times. She went on to share, “We don’t put enough stock in how powerful that is as a catalyst to generate real change.”
About the author
Bob Helbig is media partnerships director at Energage, a Philadelphia-based employee survey firm. Energage is the survey partner for Top Workplaces.
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