Your work culture is the shared set of values, beliefs and attitudes that guide your organization, and it’s reflected in the way you treat your customers and employees. Workplace culture impacts the types of candidates you attract for open positions, and having a strong work culture also boosts productivity, decreases turnover and improves employee engagement.
Work Culture Definition
By being intentional with your core values and culture initiatives, you can create a positive work culture that will inspire your team and help your organization thrive.
What Is Work Culture?
Work culture guides employees on what behaviors, expectations and matters of importance are part of the company’s current DNA. It also grows and shifts with the circumstances.
“It’s a living and breathing thing that’s evolving all the time,” J.C. Herrera, chief human resources officer at CrowdStrike, told Built In. “People need to understand the culture so they know how to get their work done.”
Work culture is different from a company’s core values, which largely remain the same over time. For example, CrowdStrike updated its core values when the company went through massive growth, expanding from under 400 people to over 4,500. Its fanatical focus on the customer, high value on innovation and strong belief that anything can be accomplished together never changed, Herrera said.
“We went full circle on this thing, and although our original values are roughly the same, it got a lot more organized in terms of how we talk about it,” Herrera added.
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Why Is Work Culture Important?
Work culture can have a profound impact on several significant aspects of the employee experience, like individual and team morale, workplace engagement and job satisfaction. For example, experiencing happiness in the workplace could raise employees’ productivity by 12 percent.
Practices that negatively impact workplace culture and promote a toxic team dynamic can steer an organization in the opposite direction, making it difficult to hire and retain good employees. A 2022 survey of job seekers revealed 23 percent of respondents identified “company values and culture” as a top influence over whether they decide to accept a job offer. That same survey also showed 21 percent of job seekers said “poor company culture” was their top reason for leaving a job in the past year and 34 percent reported leaving a job within the first 90 days because “company culture was not as expected.”
Work culture will naturally form within every organization and sometimes to the detriment of the business. Allowing negative behaviors and toxic attitudes to fester will cultivate an unfavorable work experience — and an expensive one too. Toxic workplace cultures cost U.S. employers almost $50 billion in turnover per year before the Great Resignation.
Work culture not only guides employees in the workplace, but it also guides customers on whether they want to do business with you.
“When we’re doing requests for proposals, potential customers will ask questions in the RFP. They’ll ask us to describe our culture. So it’s been a part of some of the customers’ sales process,” Herrera said.
Elements of Workplace Culture
Research from the MIT Sloan School of Management and CultureX based on Glassdoor data identified 10 elements of culture employees care most about:
- Feeling respected
- Having supportive leadership
- Whether leaders’ actions align with core values
- Managers who foster a toxic work environment
- Witnessing unethical behavior
- Benefits
- Perks and amenities
- Opportunities for learning and professional development
- Job security
- Frequency and quality of reorganizations
People report experiencing workplace culture most strongly through their employers’ approach to performance, recognition and celebrations and company mission and values, according to a 2022 Quantum Workplace survey. These foundational elements of work culture involve making sure employees feel their individual contributions are valued and their voices are being heard.
Survey respondents commonly used words like “flexible,” “inclusive,” “friendly,” “collaborative” and “fun” to characterize “ideal workplace cultures.” Most employees say defining and communicating culture starts with leaders and managers. But more than half also see employees at all levels as individual contributors in shaping culture.
How to Create a Positive Workplace Culture
The majority of people say they can tell in less than a month whether a company’s culture will be a good fit for them, and many even say they need less than a week. It’s imperative to start sooner rather than later on making meaningful cultural change.
1. Establish Core Values
First, lay out your core values. These should be the foundation of everything that happens at your organization. Dedicate as much time as necessary to ensure everyone is aligned, and include leadership, long-term employees and HR representatives so all significant parties can weigh in. In the end, you should have a concise list of values that accurately reflect your current company culture and long-term goals.
2. Commit to a Type of Workplace Culture
Think about the type of work culture you want to create. Consider everything from the physical layout of the office to how frequently employees interact with their colleagues, managers and members of the C-Suite. From there, you can start to design concrete policies and practices that facilitate these desired interactions and employee experiences.
3. Set Clear Departmental Goals
Outline the objectives of each team so employees have tangible results to work toward. Not only will this help guide individual performance, but it will encourage collaboration between team members. Make sure there is room for feedback to adjust quotas and KPIs when needed.
For example, if a team is continually reaching their objectives without breaking a sweat, you might want to modify their target goals to push production further.
4. Communicate the Organization’s Broader Goals
In addition to setting departmental goals, make sure every employee is clear on the organization’s long-term objectives. This will help individuals cultivate a sense of professional purpose. Having a source of motivation beyond quarterly quotas will demonstrate the value each role has toward achieving the company’s mission.
5. Promote Diversity and Inclusivity
Create a positive, inclusive work culture by welcoming individuals from all backgrounds and celebrating their differences. Encourage employees to share their pronouns with the rest of the team to promote inclusive language and consider establishing a committee to contribute to diversity initiatives. Work with the HR department to make diversity a part of your recruitment strategy and ensure diversity and inclusion continue to be foundational elements as your organization grows.
6. Encourage All Employees to Share Their Ideas
Every individual should feel valued and heard, regardless of their status within the company. Interns offer a much greater advantage than being delegates for busy work, and new employees bring a fresh perspective. You never know where the next big idea will come from, so let every employee have a seat at the table and feel empowered to share their thoughts.
7. Establish a Strict Zero-Tolerance Policy
A crucial facet of a positive work culture is providing employees with the opportunity to speak openly about issues they are facing — in and outside of the office — and have access to the support and resources they need. Make sure HR representatives have flexibility within their schedules to be available for personal conversations when needed, and consider implementing an anonymous sexual harassment hotline as a secure and private way for employees to report incidents in the workplace.
8. Create an Employee Recognition Program
Recognize and reward employees for achieving outstanding results. Doing so will encourage employees to continue performing at impressive levels, and make them feel valued within the company. It will also motivate their peers to up their game, fostering a work culture of friendly competition that leads to high performance.
9. Accept and Utilize Your Employee’s Feedback
Change your perspective on feedback. Rather than considering it to be indicative of something you’re doing wrong, think of it as the opposite — your employees care so much about the organization and its success that they are trying to help make it better. They’re choosing to bring their pain points to your attention and it gives you the opportunity to fix them instead of the employee stewing over them and eventually leaving the company out of frustration.
10. Be Flexible
Employees shouldn’t fear repercussions for taking time to manage other emergencies or responsibilities outside of work. You’ll earn the respect of your employees by working out compromises rather than asking employees to sacrifice their personal lives in the name of productivity. Not only that, but flexible schedules can help you attract elite candidates — 81 percent of job seekers and full-time employees want a four-day work week.
11. Be Transparent
Engaged employees invest their full selves into the success of the company, and they deserve your leadership team’s trust. Promote transparency and open communication between department heads, management and team members. Doing so will create a positive work culture where employees feel heard and valued. Consider implementing a recurring internal newsletter to share critical information with the team, and hold a monthly town hall meeting to make company-wide announcements that require more context.
12. Plan Social Outings
Humans are social beings that crave interaction. Create an opportunity to get to know each other at work and outside of work to foster meaningful relationships between employees. You can keep it simple by having a hybrid Friday happy hour in the office while simultaneously offering remote workers an online presence at the party. Think about the types of events your team would most enjoy when coming up with new work culture ideas.
Work Culture Don’ts
1. Don’t Encourage Employees to Work Through Lunch
While lunch breaks are not legally required, allowing employees to shut off their computer for 30 minutes to an hour each day helps create a positive work culture. Your team is not composed of robots, so expecting employees to continuously churn out quality work over the course of eight hours without breaks is unrealistic — and unhealthy. More than that, it suggests that employees are only valued for their work output, not as individuals. Regular breaks have actually been shown to improve attention and performance.
2. Don’t Reschedule One-On-Ones
If you’ve set aside time to meet with an employee individually, do your best to honor that meeting, especially if something else comes up. Doing so will show you value and respect the individual’s time, and care about what they have to say.
3. Don’t Make It Easy for Disengaged Employees to Stick Around
Having an engaged workforce will help propel your company forward on its path to success, while disengaged employees will slow down progress. If you notice individuals who are counterproductive to your team’s success, pull them aside to discuss their behavior. If nothing improves after making an effort to positively address the situation, it is time to part ways.
4. Don’t Limit Learning Opportunities to Job Descriptions
Skill building is an important part of a positive work experience. Allow employees to pursue their passions, both in and outside of the office, and encourage information sharing between colleagues. This exchange of knowledge will lead to improved employee relationships, collaboration and camaraderie.
5. Don’t Hire for Work-Culture Fit
A key part of creating a diverse community within the office is hiring for culture adds, not culture fits. The cultural add recruiting model means identifying candidates who share and embody your core values and who offer a unique perspective. You want to continue to grow and develop your work culture and company, so look for candidates who will productively add to your team, not necessarily fit into a mold.
6. Don’t Tolerate Poor Managers
Managers directly impact employee engagement and performance. In fact, employees under the highest-performing managers strongly agreed they’d be working at the same organization within two years, compared to only 39 percent of employees under the lowest-performing managers. So, it’s vital to make sure those individuals who are leading a team are doing so with conviction and in accordance with your core values.
7. Don’t Expect HR to Do All of the Work
As hard as HR teams may try, work culture isn’t created by a handful of people. It’s a team effort and HR teams can’t be tasked with doing it alone. Positive cultures are created when everyone works together.
8. Don’t Force It
Positive and fulfilling work cultures don’t just appear overnight. Keep to your values, listen to your employees, have some fun, and it will take shape organically. Work cultures that keep people happy and businesses thriving take time.
Creating a positive work culture where everyone feels valued, welcomed and respected is vital to an organization’s success. Be sure to take your employees’ feedback into account and lean on them to help cultivate a great work experience.
4 ready-to-use templates to effectively plan, execute and measure your employer brand.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is work culture?
Work culture refers to the set of values, attitudes and practices that guide employee interactions at all levels of an organization. A well-defined work culture ties these expectations to a company’s overall mission, giving employees a clear purpose and aligning their behaviors with the long-term goals of the business.
What are examples of work culture?
Examples of work culture can include a business that provides unlimited PTO because it believes in employee wellness, a company that pays for online courses because it values employee upskilling or an organization that sends out a weekly, company-wide newsletter because it prioritizes transparency.
What is toxic workplace culture?
A toxic workplace culture is an environment where unhealthy behaviors and conflicts among employees go unchecked. Common practices in toxic workplaces include constant gossip, no breaks or flexibility, a lack of recognition and few opportunities for promotion or growth.
What are the types of workplace culture?
The four main types of workplace culture are clan culture, adhocracy culture, market culture and hierarchy culture. However, other types of workplace culture include purpose-driven culture, customer-oriented culture and caring culture.
