Workplace culture happens whether you design it or not. It isn’t created by posters, values decks or an annual away day. It’s shaped every day by behaviour — what gets tolerated, what gets rewarded and what gets talked about when leaders aren’t in the room. So if you don’t shape it intentionally, it may end up working against you rather than for you.
For HR and L&D leaders, this matters more than ever. Engagement is fragile, return-to-office conversations are tense – and people are far less willing to tolerate cultures that feel performative, joyless or misaligned with how they actually work. Culture is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s a strategic lever for performance, retention and trust.
In this blog, Stephanie Davies shares two very different experiences of workplace culture – one accidental, one intentional – and what they taught her about why culture isn’t about perks or policies, but people. She’ll explore why great cultures don’t happen by chance, what leaders often get wrong and how intentional culture design can make work feel worth the effort again.
The power of people in workplace culture
On a scale of job satisfaction from one to ten, my stint as a data inputter at HMRC is a solid seven. It was not as smelly as my stint at the kipper yard in the Isle of Man, where my friends would often comment afterwards that I smelled of fish (no jokes please), but equally nowhere as rewarding as my current role as self-appointed Head of Happiness at Laughology.
I’ll be honest, the work at the tax office was mind-numbingly dull. Number input, all day, checking addresses and punching in the right numbers, then repeating with the next and the next until your soul quietly exits your body.
Anyone who knows me will already be wondering how this happened. I fidget. I talk. I get distracted. I’m more jazz hands than keyboard hands. I have the attention of a gnat – and it gets even shorter when I’m bored. That’s why I don’t go to the cinema much and why my husband refuses to take me to the theatre. I can’t stop fidgeting or scrunching packets of sweets. To be honest, the silence kills me.
It was the same at HMRC. My focus used to drift, like a ship without an anchor. Somewhere out there, I’m convinced someone got more tax back than they were entitled to thanks to me. You’re welcome.
The hours were long, the work was dull, and managers seemed to exist mainly to patrol the floor and stop people chatting. On paper, it was a numerical sweatshop. But yet, I didn’t mind it. There were days when I even loved it. It had nothing to do with the job, mind you. What made it fun was the people.
When culture evolves by accident
No one was there as a career choice. It was just a stopgap for most of us. For me, it was a holiday job to earn some money while I was at uni. We laughed. We joked. We shared snacks. We misbehaved when the supervisor’s back was turned. Because it was a laugh, I looked forward to going in every day. The culture there was fun for the people who worked there; it had just evolved that way. No one had created it.
That was great for those of us who worked there, but not such good news for the organisation because the culture wasn’t aligned with productivity. And that should worry leaders, because it proves something important: culture will develop whether you plan for it or not. And if you don’t plan for it, you have no control over it.
HMRC didn’t set out to create a great culture, but we found a way for it to exist between us anyway.
When I worked with O2 — and felt the difference immediately
Years later, I had the pleasure of working with O2 for nearly ten years alongside leaders like Ann Pickering and Mark Evans. I was a consultant. I wasn’t on the org chart, and yet I never once felt like an outsider. Instead, I experienced a sense of welcome and trust. I felt like I belonged.
No one was above their station. Titles existed, but they didn’t get in the way. And because of that, the tough conversations were easy.
I could be honest with them and say when an idea wasn’t landing. Likewise, they could say when something I was working on or developing needed tweaking or wasn’t right. Everyone trusted each other and respected each other – and the work was better because of it.
I built friendships and connections there that I still have now. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when culture is strategic and well thought out. That’s what intentional workplace culture looks like in practice — designed, aligned and lived, not left to chance.
Why intentional workplace culture matters more than ever
Workplace culture expert Bruce Daisley’s research shows that around 90% of people feel disengaged at work. That’s not because people don’t want to work. It’s because they don’t want to work like that.
People are being asked to return to offices where meetings have tripled, autonomy has shrunk and connection feels performative.
As Daisley puts it: “The number one thing that kills office time is when people make the effort to come in and sit in back-to-back calls all day.”
People aren’t anti-office. They’re anti-pointless. And culture is what makes the difference between effort feeling worth it or being exhausting. I’ve seen brilliant people leave roles they were exceptional in because the culture didn’t work for them. Culture isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s the thing people feel first and remember longest.
The myth that workplace culture is “HR’s job”
If culture was created by HR policies alone, we’d all be working in utopias by now.
HR and L&D can design brilliant frameworks, run thoughtful programmes and craft beautifully worded values. But culture doesn’t live in documents. It lives in behaviour — particularly leadership behaviour.
People don’t take their cues from the intranet. They take them from watching what happens when someone speaks up, makes a mistake or challenges a popular idea.
If a leader says, “We value openness,” and then shuts down dissent in meetings, the culture learns quickly which message matters more.
Culture isn’t shaped by what leaders mean. It’s shaped by what they do — especially when things are busy, tense or uncomfortable.
What leaders:
- tolerate
- avoid
- reward
- joke about
- rush past
…quietly becomes the rulebook.
This is why two teams in the same organisation can have wildly different cultures. Same values. Same strategy. Completely different day-to-day experiences.
One feels energising, the other feels draining. And everyone knows why, even if they never say it out loud.
Why people disengage (and it’s not because they’re lazy)
Most people don’t disengage because they don’t care. They disengage because caring starts to feel like wasted effort.
They’ve spoken up before, and nothing changed. They’ve raised concerns and been labelled “difficult”. They’ve made the effort to come into the office only to sit on back-to-back calls with people in the same building.
Culture is the difference between someone’s effort feeling worthwhile… or exhausting.
So what actually makes workplace culture better?
Not grand gestures. Not away days, free tea and coffee or a ping pong table. Not another set of values. If leaders want a high-performing workplace culture, it starts here, when:
- Leaders model the behaviour they expect from others
- Challenge is welcomed rather than tolerated
- Feedback leads to action (or at least a conversation)
- Misaligned behaviour is addressed early, not excused later
In short, when people feel safe, trusted and respected — not because someone said they should, but because the environment proves it. And this translates virtually when we don’t have spaces where people can mingle around the pick ‘n’ mix.
It’s about how we treat each other, the importance of laughter and connections that go beyond transactional business stuff. Laughter is the glue that holds relationships and culture together when things get tough. Do not underestimate it.
Everyone contributes to culture. Leaders shape it and HR and L&D give it language, structure and support, but culture will always follow behaviour, not job titles.
Which is why the most important culture question leaders can ask isn’t “What do we say our values are?” — it’s “What do people experience and say to others when they work with us?”
Because that’s the culture, whether you designed it or not.
Join the culture conversation
Later this month, I’ll be hosting a conversation with Ann Pickering and Mark Evans about what culture really looks like when it works. Not in theory, but in practice. Laughology worked alongside O2 for years on leadership and culture development, including Big Chats, Little Chats, so this is culture from the inside.
Date: Friday 27th February
Time: 12:00–13:00
Cost: Free
