How to Get Organizational Culture Right: A Step-by-Step Approach

Organizational culture is a top priority for most companies given its direct impact on recruiting, retention and employee engagement

Organizational culture is a top priority for most companies given its direct impact on recruiting, retention and employee engagement. But navigating the complexities of defining, communicating and activating a culture that inspires and motivates your workforce can be daunting, especially during turbulent times like leadership changes, mergers or when employee engagement is low.

At Savage, we believe that all great cultures begin with a compelling purpose—the reason you exist beyond making money and the force that inspires people to connect with your company. Reports consistently show that purpose drives engagement; employees who feel a strong sense of purpose at work report significantly higher levels of resilience, health, job satisfaction and willingness to stay with the company.

So how do you build a purpose-driven organizational culture properly? Here is a step-by-step approach:

1. Assess Your Cultural Foundation

Every business has a culture. Whether created intentionally or merely inferred from the characteristic behaviors witnessed day in and day out, it is important to understand how those within your organization view yours. Insights gained in this step, provide information about what others are seeing that you may not, and can open your eyes to where you are knocking it out of the park and where you may have work to do to create clarity and specificity for what your organizational culture truly is.

2. Establish or Refine Your Cultural Foundation

A powerful culture begins with clarity about your organization’s core beliefs, centered around a purpose—your “why” you exist beyond profit generation. Alongside purpose, your mission, vision, values, and behaviors form a comprehensive set of Foundational Statements that define who you are as an organization and anchor your brand narrative and culture. These elements provide a solid foundation that aligns your strategy, guides decision-making, and sets the direction for all brand- and culture-building efforts, ensuring your words and actions are cohesive, authentic and deeply resonant.

3. Set Your Intentions

Defining what you want for your employees—not just what you expect from them—is essential to building an employer brand and workplace culture that feels engaging and meaningful. This approach goes beyond performance metrics; it involves intentionally crafting an employee experience vision that outlines the ideal environment and experiences you want to create ensuring employees feel valued, supported and connected to the company’s purpose. Not only does this differentiate how companies interact with employees, it also gives them a clear understanding of how the company’s purpose benefits them, allowing them to make that purpose real for others. By making explicit what you want for your employees, you also establish a clear framework to measure progress and guide future growth.

4. Craft Your Core Story

A compelling core story is the heartbeat of any purpose-driven organizational culture. Your employer brand narrative should clearly communicate who you are, why you exist, and what you stand for so that it resonates deeply with employees. This story, along with its visual elements, should be authentic, memorable and consistently reinforce your company’s purpose. Every aspect of your brand expression—from language and tone to colors, imagery and design—should uniquely capture and reflect the essence of your organization, inspiring employees to connect with it on a deeper, more meaningful level.

5. Assess Your Communications & Experiences

Once you are clear on the purpose and impact your organization aims to make, you can now work to bring every aspect of the organizational culture and communications into alignment. This process begins with a thorough assessment of your current state. Conducting a communication audit of branded properties, messaging, materials and channels will uncover where opportunity exists to align your messaging, streamline touchpoints, and eliminate inconsistencies that dilute your brand. Additionally, implementing an employee experience assessment survey helps determine how you are doing against the outcomes you expressed wanting to make in the employee experience vision, set benchmarks, identify priority areas, and track progress over time. These insights are crucial for pinpointing opportunities to present a unified, consistent compelling story and better align employee’s experiences with your intentions in service of motivating and inspiring employees to deliver on your purpose and desired outcomes.

6. Align Communications

With insights from your communication audit, you can now unify all internal communications and branded entities under a cohesive brand architecture that aligns every element with your core employer brand story and purpose. This strategic framework ensures that each communication reflects the central narrative, supporting a consistent and compelling message across the organization. Once the architecture is established, you can develop an implementation plan that brings all materials into alignment, reinforcing your employer brand at every touchpoint.

7. Align Experiences

Whether you implemented an employee experience assessment or not, by now you should have insights into how well the experiences within your organization align with your cultural foundation. From recruiting to onboarding and everyday interactions, thoughtful experience design can ensure that your culture is not just communicated but lived. By aligning these experiences with your company’s purpose and values, you create a cohesive environment that builds trust, fosters connection, and strengthens employee loyalty, ensuring that every experience reflects your cultural foundation and supports your organizational goals.

8. Launch & Activate Your Culture

Launching your organizational culture is a chance to unify and energize your employees around your newly codified purpose and Foundational Statements. The launch should be designed to foster awareness and understanding for the cultural foundation at every level of the organization–moving from the inside out to ensure adequate support as it is rolled out. Bringing everyone together to create a felt sense of purpose and your values can generate excitement for and engagement with the principles at the core of your organization. Post-launch, continue to activate employees by reinforcing key messages through ongoing communications, interactive exercises or workshops, and regular check-ins that keep the cultural foundation alive and front of mind. Involving select employees as culture ambassadors is another way to further reinforce the message, turning them into advocates who embody and champion your brand every day. 

9. Continuous Oversight & Evolution

Culture is not a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor. It requires ongoing measurement and evolution to stay relevant and effective. Regularly assessing employee feedback, engagement metrics, and sentiment will help you gauge how well your messages and initiatives are resonating and where adjustments may be needed. This continuous oversight ensures that you remain responsive to the evolving needs of your workforce.

In Conclusion

Creating a strong culture is a multi-faceted journey that requires strategic thought, commitment, and a willingness to adapt. By taking a structured approach and focusing on the key elements outlined above, companies can build cultures that not only attract talent but also engage and retain employees in a meaningful way.

Are you ready to explore how to uplevel your culture or employer brand? Call us to get started.