How to Build a Thriving Workplace Culture
Workplace culture is the foundation of organizational success. It shapes how employees interact, make decisions, and view their roles. But a thriving culture goes beyond perks or policies. While workplace culture can feel hard to define, successful organizations need to foster an environment where individuals feel empowered, connected, and inspired to contribute their best.??
At its core, workplace culture reflects what the majority of people do the majority of the time. As work evolves—shaped by flexible environments, technological advances, and shifting policies and expectations—organizations must actively cultivate cultures that attract talent and empower individuals to thrive. This requires deliberate effort, sustained commitment, and a strategic focus on growth, innovation, and resilience.?
We believe that a thriving culture is built on three pillars: instilling effectiveness, building trust, and creating an environment of accountability. Together, these elements create an environment where both individuals and teams excel.?
Why Workplace Culture Matters?
Developing—or perhaps redeveloping—a healthy, organizational culture in today’s environment requires an investment of patience, trust, and support. But the reward is a workforce that shows up authentically, does their very best work, and is less likely to exit when things get tough.
— Christi Phillips, Ph.D., co-author of Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity
Workplace culture is the invisible force driving organizational behavior. It shapes how employees feel about their work, collaborate, and contribute to organizational goals. Research shows that companies with strong cultures consistently outperform peers in productivity, engagement, and financial results.??
In fact, Forbes reports that companies with strong workplace cultures see four times higher revenue growth increases, while companies featured in Fortune’s yearly “100 Best Companies to Work For” list bring in significantly higher average annual returns. Additionally, work-related stress and disengagement—common indicators of negative office cultures—have been tied to higher absenteeism and voluntary turnover, as well as lower productivity, profitability, and job growth.???
Those bottom-line issues are often compelling enough for organizations to take a closer look at their existing culture and identify where improvements can be made. A healthy office culture benefits both employees and organizations by unlocking greater potential at every level:?
Neglecting culture, however, leads to disengagement, high turnover, and a diminished ability to adapt to change—jeopardizing long-term success. With that in mind, what are the actionable steps leaders can take to build a thriving culture within their organizations??
Instill Habits of Effectiveness?
Personal and interpersonal effectiveness unlocks your technical and functional capabilities to create, collaborate, and achieve results with others.
— Jennifer Colosimo, president of enterprise division, FranklinCovey
Empowered employees drive organizational success, and empowerment begins with fostering habits of effectiveness—intentional behaviors that enable individuals to perform at their best. When employees adopt these habits, they take greater ownership of their responsibilities, relationships, and well-being, creating a ripple effect of positive outcomes across the workplace.?
Key Benefits:?
When employees embrace habits of effectiveness, their impact extends beyond individual achievements. They foster collaboration, elevate their colleagues, and contribute to a culture of collective excellence. High-performing employees naturally inspire others, driving innovation and sustained success across the organization.?
These habits ensure individual efforts are aligned with organizational priorities, enabling employees to focus their energy on the most critical goals. The result is a workforce that is not only highly effective but also deeply committed to advancing the organization’s mission.?
Organizations that invest in cultivating these habits among their employees gain a significant competitive edge: a workforce that is engaged, adaptable, and consistently delivering exceptional results.?
Create a High-Trust Environment?
Extending trust is the ultimate act of leadership, the defining skill that transforms a manager into a leader.
— Stephen M. R. Covey
Trust is the foundation of collaboration and innovation, underpinning every successful relationship, team, and organization. A high-trust culture in the workplace begins with fostering self-trust, rooted in the 4 Cores of Credibility: integrity, intent, capabilities, and results. These principles, which speak to the attributes of character and competence, ensure that individuals consistently act with honesty, purpose, and follow-through—qualities that build confidence in themselves and others.?
When individuals practice high-trust behaviors, they:?
By building trust at every level—starting with self-trust and extending to interpersonal and organizational trust—leaders create an environment where individuals and teams are empowered to perform at their best and achieve extraordinary results together.?
Download our free guide, How to Build Trust and Unleash the Potential of Your Direct Reports.?
Make Accountability a Core Value?
To have a thriving high-trust culture, organizations also need to establish and maintain a culture of radical accountability. Practicing accountability is one of the 13 Behaviors? of High Trust, illustrating the 4 Cores of Credibility that make up the traits of character and competence. When everyone takes ownership of their responsibilities, they can foster goal alignment while driving more impactful outcomes.??
Trust is a function of two things:
Character includes your integrity, your motive, and your intent—as seen at the bottom of the model.
Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, your results, and your track record—the top of the model. Leaders will discover how to use the 4 Cores?of Credibility and the 13 Behaviors??of High Trust to accelerate their team’s results.
Behaving with integrity—by keeping commitments, practicing transparent communication, extending trust to others, and righting wrongs—is crucial for leaders and teams that want to improve accountability in the workplace. But while ethical behavior is a cornerstone of any thriving culture, teams also need internal guideposts that align their activities and mindset with the company’s overall mission and values.??
One way to accomplish this is to establish a framework for execution and performance, like the 4 Disciplines of Execution?. These disciplines, outlined below, can provide leaders with a system or a formula that allows team members to more effectively execute on the team’s or organization’s most important priorities—providing a heightened sense of purpose, value, and motivation around shared initiatives.??
When team members and leaders are accountable for their behaviors and for their results, they can build trust and unleash performance potential—two major components of a thriving employee culture.?
Understanding Workplace Culture?
We define workplace culture as what the majority of your people do the majority of the time. It encompasses the shared values, behaviors, and attitudes that characterize an organization’s environment. More than just an abstract concept, culture serves as the foundation for how employees interact, make decisions, and perceive their roles and responsibilities.?
Key Components of Workplace Culture?
Together, these components create a unique atmosphere that shapes employee experiences and significantly impacts satisfaction, productivity, and retention.?
The Role of Leadership in Shaping Office Culture?
Leadership is the linchpin in building and sustaining a strong workplace culture. Leaders set the cultural tone through their actions and decisions, modeling the behaviors they want to see across the organization. Effective leadership is about inspiring trust, fostering respect and collaboration, and driving clarity of purpose—critical factors in creating a thriving workplace.?
By equipping leaders with the skills to align culture with organizational priorities, you can unlock the potential of your teams and achieve extraordinary results.??
The Pillars of a Strong Workplace Culture?
Building a resilient and thriving workplace culture requires a deliberate focus on foundational elements that foster trust, transparency, and engagement. These pillars create an environment where employees feel empowered to contribute their best efforts and ideas.?
Leadership and Trust?
The first job of a leader—at work or at home—is to inspire trust. It’s to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility.
— Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything?
Credible and trustworthy leadership is essential to shaping workplace culture. Leaders who demonstrate integrity, clear intent, strong capabilities, and consistent results create a foundation of credibility.?
Trustworthy leaders inspire confidence in their teams by:?
When leaders focus on trust-building behaviors, they accelerate the pace of change and enable their teams to work more effectively toward shared goals, ultimately driving greater innovation and stronger business outcomes.?
The outdated “Command & Control” style of leadership doesn’t get results in the knowledge worker age. Instead, today’s leaders need to adopt a “Trust & Inspire” model to bring out greatness in their teams. These leaders model behaviors like humility, courage, and authenticity for their teams. These leaders also work to right wrongs, demonstrate respect, show loyalty, keep their commitments, listen first, practice accountability, and express clear expectations to build “trust dividends” that pay off in spades.?
When team members see these behaviors effectively modeled by leadership, they’ll not only feel more connected to this high-trust culture, but they’ll also be more likely to adopt these behaviors themselves—ultimately propelling teams further, faster.?
Open Communication and Transparency?
When we listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building. Opportunities to then speak openly and to be understood come much more naturally and easily. Seeking to understand takes consideration; seeking to be understood takes courage. Effectiveness lies in balancing the two.
— Stephen R. Covey?
Clear, honest communication and transparency are vital for cultivating trust within an organization. Communication isn’t merely how we express vital information to others; it also relates to how we receive, understand, and validate others’ experiences. When we prioritize transparency, connection, and clear-cut communication, employees feel informed, valued, and actively involved in decision-making processes.?
Transparency fosters a culture of openness by:?
Employees who feel their voices are being heard and respected—and that they have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them—develop a stronger sense of involvement and trust in the organization. This, in turn, enhances engagement, loyalty, and teamwork.??
The numbers here speak for themselves. Notably, one recent study found that nearly half of employees who left jobs early did so due to unclear expectations from their employers. Moreover, Slack found that over 80% of workers want a better understanding of how workplace decisions are made, with 87% of job candidates stating that they would prioritize transparency in the workplace when deciding where to work. In general, employees say they’d like more strategic updates from senior leadership, as they feel these updates would drive engagement.?
Providing clarity on goals and expectations is key for an engaged culture, but effective communication extends beyond job responsibilities and big-picture goals. How leaders communicate with their teams—as well as how coworkers interact with each other—can have a significant impact on an organization’s culture. Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood?, known as the principle of respect within the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, helps individuals become more intentional listeners to create space for others’ perspectives and emotions. This habit of self-effectiveness allows us to understand the experiences, challenges, and opinions of others more deeply, helping leaders and teams develop stronger connections to both each other and the work at-hand.??
Employee Engagement?
Imagine the personal and organizational cost of failing to fully engage the passion, talent, and intelligence of the workforce. It is far greater than all taxes, interest charges, and labor costs put together!
— Stephen R. Covey?
Gallup reports that employee engagement hit an 11-year low in 2024. But contrary to popular belief, employee disengagement can’t be eradicated with extra office perks or flexible work arrangements. At its heart, engagement can be traced back to fulfilled (or unfulfilled) purpose.??
When employees feel personally connected to your organization’s mission, values, and goals—and feel they’re directly contributing to those outcomes—they’ll feel invested in their jobs and in their growth within the company. Studies have found that nearly 90% of people want to feel a greater sense of purpose in their lives. Although roughly 70% of people say their own sense of purpose comes from the work they do,data reveals that only 15% of front-line teams and managers feel they can live their purpose at work.?
That means organizations have a big opportunity to foster connection and purpose to fuel engagement. Because engaged employees are the driving force behind organizational success, leaders must prioritize strategies that resonate with employees’ needs and aspirations, such as:?
The main takeaway for leaders: By creating an environment where employees feel heard, appreciated, and empowered, organizations can unlock their teams’ full potential and achieve lasting success.?
Building a Culture of Innovation?
An employee culture that encourages innovation is a catalyst for business success. By fostering creativity and enabling employees to take risks, organizations can uncover breakthrough ideas that drive progress and differentiation.?
Innovation thrives when leaders:?
Research suggests that industry leaders in innovation also exhibit high levels of creativity, excitement, and optimism. Conversely, fear acts as a significant barrier to innovation. More than 85% of innovation practitioners report that fear frequently impedes progress, yet only a quarter of organizations recognize the extent of this challenge—and fewer than 11% take action to address it. When organizations mitigate these fears, they foster a more forward-thinking, risk-tolerant culture.?
The way organizations utilize language can be a powerful tool to drive innovation. In a McKinsey interview, one organization was quoted as internally rebranding the word “mistakes” to “mis-takes,” emphasizing the important role they play in the innovation process and the point that the innovator is always encouraged to try another “take.” Another company’s leadership team began every large meeting by thanking the idea’s authors before iterating, noting that it’s always easier to edit after the fact than to create from scratch.??
Ensuring that your organization’s culture views mistakes as opportunities—and opts to express gratitude rather than to assign blame—can build trust, foster collaboration and accountability, and encourage mindful risk-taking in your teams. Subsequently, by embedding innovation into the fabric of workplace culture, organizations can stay competitive, adapt to change, and achieve extraordinary results.??
Listen to Be a Better Leader: Trust Drives Innovation?
Navigating Challenges in Workplace Culture: Change?
Persist through the discomfort of the change and move on into innovation—the opportunity beyond what was asked.
— Kory Kogon, vice president of content development, FranklinCovey
Every organization faces challenges that test the strength of its culture. Successfully navigating these challenges requires intentional strategies to maintain engagement, trust, and resilience.?
Flexibility and adaptability are vital for sustaining a positive workplace culture during times of change. Change—whether driven by external forces or internal evolution—can create uncertainty, but organizations that embrace it as an opportunity for growth will emerge stronger.?
Key benefits of adaptability include:?
Leaders who understand the predictable pattern of change—namely, the four zones of The Change Model, visually outlined below—can successfully guide their teams through the zones of status quo, disruption, and adoption into the zone of innovation. Knowing that it’s ultimately your people who make change happen, rather than merely your processes, can help leaders engage their teams to reveal what’s possible—all while retaining or even improving your culture.?
The Change Model
While every change is unique, there’s a predictable pattern to change. Understanding this pattern and building the skills to navigate it successfully allows us to consciously determine how to move forward—even in the most challenging stages.
Organizations that approach change with a growth mindset will demonstrate to employees that challenges can lead to new opportunities for improvement and success. This outlook keeps employees engaged, motivated, and aligned with the organization’s vision, ensuring a culture of continuous improvement.?
How do your leaders respond to change? Download our free guide, Adapt to Change: 5 Self-Coaching Questions, to identify your approach to change and learn to thrive in new circumstances.?
Transforming Workplace Culture: Unlocking Potential and Driving Growth?
A thriving culture in the workplace is not built by chance. Rather, it is the result of intentional efforts to foster trust, innovation, and growth. By focusing on the foundational pillars of leadership, communication, engagement, and adaptability, organizations can create an environment where employees feel valued, motivated, and inspired to contribute their best work.?
Key takeaways include:?
Cultivating a winning workplace culture requires deliberate actions and the right tools. FranklinCovey can guide your organization in building an office culture that not only attracts top talent but also drives lasting success. Learn more about how we can help you cultivate a winning culture for your organization.