How to Improve Work Culture From the Inside Out

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How to improve work culture isn’t a question reserved for HR handbooks or the annual offsite anymore. It’s a real, everyday challenge for anyone trying to build a workplace where people can actually thrive.

At Farleigh, we believe improving work culture starts with something simple but often overlooked: listening. Because workplace culture isn’t a strategy. It’s how it feels on a Tuesday morning when a deadline slips, a colleague needs support, or someone’s effort goes unseen.

This guide brings together hard-won lessons from the organisations we’ve worked with – from helping global teams connect around shared purpose to rebuilding collaboration after rapid change. It’s not a list of perks or platitudes. It’s a human-first approach to building a workplace that actually works.

Understanding Your Starting Point: What’s the Culture Now?


Before you improve workplace culture, you need to get honest about where things stand. That starts with asking the right questions – and being open to what you hear in return.

Work culture lives in the everyday experiences of your people. It’s in how decisions are made, how conflict is handled, and how success is shared (or not). It’s in the unwritten rules, the tone of internal messages, the feeling people get in meetings, or whether they feel safe speaking up.

Sometimes, the signs are clear: high turnover, missed goals, low morale, a drop in employee engagement. But just as often, they’re subtle: a lack of spark, limited collaboration, teams doing their jobs – but not really connected to each other or the organisation’s bigger picture.

This is where listening really matters. Structured employee feedback is a start – surveys, one-to-ones, exit interviews. But it’s just as important to pay attention to informal signals too: the tone in team chats, energy in meetings, and simply how people talk about their day.

Start by exploring questions like:

  • What’s the general employee experience here – energising or draining?
  • What’s driving employee disengagement, and where is it showing up?
  • How does our culture impact job satisfaction and employee retention?
  • Is our workplace culture consistent across teams and leaders?

You can’t improve what you don’t understand. And culture work only sticks when it’s rooted in what’s really happening – not what you hope is happening. If you don’t start at the source, the change won’t last.

Put Your Values to Work

Most organisations have values, but far fewer have values that actually shape how people behave. There’s a gap between what’s printed in the handbook and what happens in real conversations, decisions, and meetings. That gap is often where culture loses its footing.

If you want to know how to create a positive work culture, start by making sure your values aren’t just aspirational – they’re observable. Can your team describe what “respect” or “integrity” looks like in action for their roles? Can your leaders model it consistently?

At Farleigh, we’ve seen how powerful it can be when values stop living in slide decks and start shaping real conversations. With Devro, we helped teams take abstract value statements and turn them into something people could actually use – a shared language for how they gave feedback, challenged ideas, recognised effort, and made decisions together. That clarity helped shift the culture from passive to purposeful.

👉 Read The Full Case Study Here

How to Embed Your Values in Everyday Culture

Creating a strong company culture means putting values into practice as everyday standards. That happens when you embed them into how things actually work. Start by looking at these four areas:

How leaders show up and communicate

→ Are your leaders modelling the behaviours you say you value? If collaboration is a core value, are they inviting input or making decisions in isolation? Review meeting dynamics, comms tone, and visibility – and gather employee feedback to see how leadership is perceived day-to-day.

How decisions are made and explained

→ Do your decisions reflect your values, or contradict them? For example, if transparency is a value, are you clearly communicating the “why” behind changes? Audit recent decisions and ask: would a team member see our values reflected here?

How new employees are welcomed and supported

→ Does your onboarding bring your values to life, or just mention them once in a PowerPoint? Review how new employees experience their first 30 days, from team introductions to training – and make sure they don’t just hear about the culture, but can see and feel it.

How feedback, both positive and challenging, is given

→ Are people recognised for living the values, not just hitting targets? And can tough feedback happen with respect and clarity? Look at how employee recognition is shared and whether feedback is tied to behaviour as well as outcomes.

Build It With Them, Not For Them

Here’s the overlooked truth about how to improve work culture: it won’t work unless your people help shape it.

Too many organisations try to shift culture at their people, not with them. That’s when you get resistance, disengagement, or surface-level compliance. If you want a culture that’s honest, energising, and built to last, co-creation is key.

Start by involving your teams in the process:

  • What do they think a positive work environment looks like here?
  • What’s getting in the way of a healthy company culture? 
  • What would make them feel more connected to the purpose of the organisation? 

The answers are already inside your teams – your job is to make space to hear them.

We regularly bring cross-functional groups together to map out what culture means in practice. It’s about building trust in leadership, shared ownership, and momentum. And when people see their fingerprints on the outcome, they’re far more likely to support and sustain it.

This work also needs to be inclusive by design. That means making sure the voices shaping your culture reflect the full spectrum of your workforce – across levels, backgrounds, geographies, and lived experiences. A truly inclusive culture is actively shaped by diversity. And when people feel seen and involved, employee engagement and employee recognition become a natural part of daily life.

Recognition Should Be a Daily Practice

If you’re trying to build a strong company culture, don’t overlook something deceptively simple: recognition.

We don’t mean the once-a-year awards or the “great job” Slack emoji. We’re talking about a culture where people regularly notice, name, and celebrate the behaviours that matter – and connect them back to the values of the organisation.

The best cultures treat employee recognition as a practice. One that happens consistently, specifically, and sincerely. When people feel seen – not just for what they achieve, but for how they go about it – it builds a sense of meaning and belonging.

We’ve seen organisations make big shifts by changing the way recognition is given. Moving from generic praise (“well done!”) to behaviour-linked feedback (“the way you handled that disagreement showed real empathy – that’s what collaboration looks like here”) helps reinforce what the culture actually values. Over time, that consistency shapes what’s normal, and what’s celebrated.

Recognition is also a lever for inclusion. Are the same voices being praised repeatedly? Are quieter contributions going unnoticed? A healthy recognition culture makes space for different strengths to be valued – not just the loudest or most visible ones.

And recognition isn’t just about feeling good. It directly impacts employee performance, engagement, and even retention. In cultures where recognition flows freely and meaningfully, you’ll find more engaged employees, stronger relationships, and a more positive workplace culture overall. It’s a win-win. 

Equip Leaders to Lead the Culture

One of the more uncomfortable truths about how to improve work culture: your culture is only as strong as the behaviours your leaders model – especially when no one’s watching.

Leaders shape what’s normal through how they listen, handle pressure, and how they treat people when things don’t go to plan. Culture isn’t cascaded from the top; it’s reinforced everyday in meetings, one-to-ones, and even silence.

We’ve seen well-intentioned culture work fall flat because leaders weren’t given the tools or space to lead it. They were expected to communicate new values or shift team dynamics without first being invited to reflect on their own. And when that happens, culture becomes a message, not a movement.

That’s why we focus on leadership development that goes deeper than performance reviews or skill-building workshops. The real work is helping leaders understand their influence on employee performance, trust, and the energy of their teams. It’s giving them space to slow down, get honest, and rebuild their approach to leadership in a way that aligns with the culture they’re being asked to shape.

We ask questions like:

  • What behaviours do you model, consciously or unconsciously?
  • Where might you be sending mixed signals about what’s valued?
  • How do you create safety and accountability for your team?

Because without trust in leadership, culture work stalls. If you want to improve work culture, start with the people who influence it most.

Design for Connection – Especially in Hybrid Teams

One of the most common things we hear from teams right now isn’t “we don’t get along”, it’s “we don’t really know each other anymore.”

Hybrid and remote work have brought flexibility, but they’ve also chipped away at the connective tissue that holds teams together. Teams often tell us they feel less connected, less energised, and less clear on how their work fits into the bigger picture. The structures are still there, but the spark is missing.

Rebuilding that sense of connection takes more than logistics. It means creating small, intentional moments: rituals, recognition, shared space to pause – that remind people they belong, even when they’re not in the same room.

We’ve explored this challenge in more depth, drawing on what we’ve seen work inside real teams.

👉 Read our full blog on remote working challenges

If you’re thinking about how to create a positive work culture in a hybrid world, this is a crucial piece of it.

Share Your Success As You Go

We know that culture change often feels intangible, especially in the early stages. Progress is happening, but it’s easy to miss when you’re in the middle of it – that’s why sharing success is essential.

It doesn’t have to be flashy. Just name the real moments of movement: a conversation that felt different, a team that handled conflict differently, a leader who tried a new approach, a moment where values showed up under pressure. Sharing these stories helps make abstract ideas real. It shows what success looks like here, not in theory, but in the context of your teams, your challenges, your organisation.

When you share success like this, you:

  • Build belief in the direction of the culture
  • Reinforce the behaviours you want to see more of
  • Boost employee satisfaction and engagement by helping people feel part of something that’s moving forward

And it’s not just good for morale. Culture visibility sharpens employee performance too. When people see what’s working, and why, it brings clarity around expectations and strengthens alignment across the company.  That’s when you start to see the connection between culture and real business outcomes.

If you’re aiming to build strong, resilient company cultures, don’t wait until the end to measure impact. Show the shifts as they happen – and let your people see the part they’re playing in it.

How to Improve Work Culture by Making It a Business Priority

If you want culture to last, stop treating it like a side hustle.

Too often, culture gets confined to a slide deck, but it has to show up in the hard stuff. In trade-offs. In who gets promoted. In what gets celebrated, challenged, or quietly ignored.

You can master how to create a positive work culture when it’s baked into the same systems that already drive how your organisation operates and grows.

Here’s what making culture a business priority actually looks like:

  • Strategic planning. Is culture shaping where you focus, or only addressed after the fact? If collaboration is a value, is it built into how functions are expected to work together? If learning is key, are you giving time and space for reflection?
  • Budgeting and resourcing. Is there actual investment behind your culture ambitions, or are they expected to run on goodwill? Are you funding initiatives that support belonging, leadership development, or cross-team alignment – or hoping culture “just happens”?
  • Risk and governance. Is culture part of how you assess business risk? What happens when a high performer damages morale? Are you clear on which behaviours are non-negotiable, even under pressure?
  • KPIs and metrics. Are you measuring behaviours as well as outcomes? Can you track things like psychological safety, trust, or cross-team effectiveness with the same rigour you apply to revenue?
  • Decision-making and trade-offs. When a tough call comes down to speed vs. people, or values vs. convenience, what wins? And does that decision get explained clearly, or quietly brushed over?

This is where culture either grows up or stays cosmetic. If it only shows up in internal campaigns or onboarding decks, it’s not going to last. But if it’s built into how your business thinks, prioritises, and makes decisions – it becomes impossible to ignore.

Wrapping Up: How to Create a Positive Work Culture

There’s no playbook for culture, and there shouldn’t be. Every organisation is different. But what we know for sure is this: the strongest cultures aren’t built through slogans or away days. They’re shaped by how people feel, how decisions are made, and how work gets done.

At Farleigh, we help organisations build cultures that are honest, connected, and built to last. Whether you’re rethinking the way your teams work together, developing leadership that people trust, or trying to unlock a culture that actually reflects your values – we’re here for the real work.

We’re culture consultants, yes. But we’re also experts in leadership development, people development, and making the human side of business work better.

If you’re navigating how to improve work culture in your organisation, or simply want to create a place where people can do their best work and feel good doing it – we’d love to hear what you’re working through.

👉 Get in touch today

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