How to Build Company Culture in 6 Simple, Scalable Steps

How can we boil down an ideal workplace culture into a few words? Innovative, but also sustainable. Inclusive, but also the pinnacle of excellence. An approachable, productive community of progressive pioneers!

Sure. The whole time, the new hires completing onboarding are thinking, “What in the world have I walked into?”

Today, we’re setting the more ambitious combinations of adjectives aside and laying out some basics. From startup to small business, the workplace isn’t defined by a foosball table or leadership’s social media musings. Here’s how to build company culture for real.

Quick refresher: What is company culture?

Company culture defines how people in the same workplace behave and collaborate. It shapes how much belonging and psychological safety someone feels at work.

Despite the nice feelings these words evoke, great workplace culture isn’t at all about babying employees, having more fun, or deprioritizing quality output. It’s about retaining people who make an organization successful.

• Employees who feel connected to their company culture are 47% less likely to keep an eye on job listings.
• They’re also 62% less likely to experience regular burnout.
• Best of all, they’re over four times more likely to be engaged.

However, only 20% of employees say they feel a strong connection to their company culture. Much of this isn’t because the culture is toxic; it’s because it’s inconsistent and not well-defined. AKA, not much of a culture.

How to build company culture: A brief, step-by-step guide

All killer, no filler. Use this quick-start guide as a jumping-off point to strengthen or reboot a culture that engages and retains a quality crew.

1. Defining core values.

And don’t stop there. Once you define what your organization stands for- autonomy, customer-centricity, innovation, or whatever else- dive deeper. Draft examples of what these values look like in action. Grow the list over time. Here’s an example:

Core value:

How it shows up in the culture:

INTEGRITY

Employees can submit critical feedback anonymously without fear of retaliation or exposure.

Leadership brings employees in on decisions. They communicate effectively and set clear expectations.

Everyone can admit mistakes and apologize for them without feeling excessively judged or shunned.

Cutting corners or reducing quality to fluff up numbers or influence data isn’t common practice.

Ultimately, these are goals, not idealizations. You’ll know exactly what your team’s culture-building should produce. Now you can add in leadership practices, rituals, and praise to reinforce the behaviors that best reflect the value.

2. Selecting tools and other channels.

Communication builds connection, and connections create culture. People should have no questions about where and how they connect, especially on remote teams. Your core four tool categories are general communication, project management, recognition, and collaboration. Sub-steps for choosing them:

• Determine needs. This involves exposing areas where current tools aren’t the best fit.
• Get input. Employees can share which tools they’d like to use or which they’ve used successfully in the past.
• Prioritize integration and simplicity. Sort out choices by combining tools that work well together and offer the best ease of use.
• Confirm security and scalability. Finalize choices by assessing security standards and growth capabilities.

3. Bringing leaders aboard.

Depending on their role, they may be the cultural blueprint. Most of us have seen what happens when we try to build a modern, inclusive culture around a hostile, closed-off C-suite.

Engagement and recognition data can help soften arguments against a people-first workplace culture. So can sharing evidence that today’s CEOs are very much on board with more inclusive cultures.

A bit further down the ladder, we can do a lot for culture through management training. Authentic appreciation and transparency are two key qualities to start championing among managers and team leads. No matter what other areas they need to work on, those two help keep culture-building efforts from caving in.

4. Outline how you’ll handle growth and support.

Growth and support underpin every great culture, even if they’re not the most visible values. They’re your best bets for preventing burnout–not lighter responsibilities.

• Growth/development. Offer regular career-pathing conversations, internal updates on openings, and mentorship. These don’t just add value. They increase honest conversations about someone’s job. That, in turn, decreases the anxiety and uncertainty that makes people throw in the towel.
• Support. A total rewards strategy works well here, adding perks like flexible scheduling. Wellness programs that include mental health resources are another common feature of supportive work cultures.

5. Adding recognition, rituals, and rewards.

If you’ve chosen recognition tools, it’s time to place them within a larger program. Pin down essential channels for peer and top-down recognition. From there, add in milestone and value-based recognition. Brainstorm team rituals as offshoots of these.

Add rewards further down the line once recognition is firmly in place. Our pals at Crossrope show how recognition, values, awards, rituals, and more can come together under one umbrella. Learn how they created a well-rounded, value-centric, culturally relevant recognition program with HeyTaco.

6. Iterate and evolve, letting employees fine-tune the environment.

At the end of the day, we’re all at our jobs doing what we can to make an impact. Think about what this really means to employees. Having an impact means your voice matters to the listener. What you do or say is evident in the environment.

Pulse checks and feedback loops help you measure and adjust your efforts to improve the culture. Letting people shape their customs, even something as simple as sharing memes in the team chat, makes rituals feel more natural.

Pro tip: Celebrate often, and don’t forget the small stuff. Meeting shout-outs, team activities, and other forms of public recognition reinforce how important these positive changes are.

Make gratitude a key feature of the culture.

Saying “thank you” more often is a fast track to a better company culture, and we’re not exaggerating. If you want to start making win-worthy strides right away, a seamlessly integrated, fun, low-pressure recognition tool is a huge step.

“It's low-effort, high-impact culture-building — and honestly, our Slack would feel weirdly empty without it.” —Abhinav P., Solutions Engineering

Learn how to build company culture with HeyTaco for free.