Turning the Ship Around: A Guide to Changing Workplace Culture

Tips for changing workplace culture

Every business and employee is unique, so approaches to changing workplace culture differ. However, some universal best practices can help change your office environment and craft a happy, productive work culture that suits your business.

1. When changing workplace culture, consider individual employees.

Changing workplace culture companywide is your ultimate goal. However, when getting started, you must narrow your focus to a more detailed level. Consider the individuals who comprise your organization. After all, if the people in your business don’t change, neither will your company culture.

Some people have a more significant impact on company culture than others:

• Managers: Consider those in management and leadership positions. Employees often take cues from business owners and company executives. What they say, how they act, and the policies they implement can have lasting effects. 
• Office influencers: Additionally, unofficial leaders can wield power. Charismatic and well-liked team members, as well as unpleasant and toxic individuals, can significantly affect company culture.

When you pinpoint managers and unofficial leaders who can positively influence the company culture, do your best to nurture and empower them to help create a ripple effect that motivates and uplifts others.

If you identify a leader or team member with problematic behavior or a bad attitude, talk to them and try to understand their motivations. For instance, if you’re dealing with someone who routinely undercuts co-workers to get a promotion, they may think they’re demonstrating take-charge, self-starter behavior. You can explain that you value team collaboration. 

2. Make the right hiring and firing decisions to change workplace culture.

The biggest key to changing culture is eliminating toxic employees and infusing the business with the right talent. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest thing to do. Your first step is to sit down with existing employees and determine who must go. Signs it’s time to terminate an employee include: 

• They’re unwilling to change after repeated feedback.
• They never admit their mistakes. 
• They consistently demonstrate lazy behavior.
• They won’t accept constructive criticism. 

After terminating toxic employees, you must find new hires who align with your corporate values. Focus on the big picture in the hiring process, not insignificant things like specific language in the job description. Consider hiring for attitude over experience if the job skills needed are teachable. 

Yonason Goldson, director of Ethical Imperatives, LLC, advised prioritizing character over skills when hiring. “Ethical people are competent and capable,” Goldson explained. “They will learn to do what needs to be done.” Goldson also emphasized the importance of providing proper training, mentorship and support: “Invest in your people, and they will repay you many times over.”

Empowering the employees you hire is equally essential. “Give them responsibility to make decisions,” Goldson recommended. “When employees feel trusted, they will work hard to earn and keep that trust.”

3. Set short-term goals when changing company culture.

Short-term goals foster steady, consistent change. Gather your leadership team and develop a list of specific, tangible changes you want to see in the workplace culture. Examples include the following: 

• You want employees to show up on time.
• You want lower-level employees to seek more responsibilities.
• You want an environment that fosters creativity.
• You want better communication among managers and team members.
• You want better employee collaboration.

After identifying short-term goals, you can develop specific timetables to attack them. Instead of trying to juggle multiple changes simultaneously, tackle them one at a time. For example, start by developing new rules that encourage punctuality. Once that’s no longer an issue, focus on motivating lower-level employees. Once that ball is rolling, consider how you can encourage across-the-board creativity and innovation. Short-term goals build momentum and ultimately push your organization to long-term, sustainable change.

4. Listen to employees to improve workplace culture.

Regardless of how well you think you know your employees, you can’t truly know their thoughts or feelings without asking.

Sit down and discuss the company’s workplace culture with everyone in the organization. Ask them what they’d change, what they like and what they feel holds them back from accomplishing more. This listening exercise shows employees you care and provides valuable insights into what’s happening on the ground level.

5. Follow through with promises to change workplace culture.

Creating sustainable behavioral change involves setting clear boundaries and honoring commitments. For example, if your policy states repeated tardiness will result in a formal warning, you must follow through with that repercussion to maintain credibility. On the positive side, you may promise to reward employees with an extra day off for every 20 consecutive days they arrive early. 

Whether you’re applying negative or positive reinforcement, consistency is key to building trust and reinforcing the desired behavior.

Challenges of changing workplace culture

Stephen Kohler, founder and CEO of Audira Labs, says your team members’ mindsets can be the biggest barrier to changing workplace culture. “There will always be cynics that avoid enacting change because of the way things have ‘always’ been,” Kohler explained. “Others will blindly attempt to change workplace cultures without taking into account past successes or failures — for example: ‘This worked at my last workplace, so it must be perfect here.'”

Kohler emphasized the importance of finding a compromise and aligning your team to enact real, positive change.

Changing an entrenched workplace culture isn’t easy. However, with patience and effort, it can be done. Here are a few challenges you may face when trying to change workplace culture and how to solve them. 

1. Not all executives are on board with changing workplace culture.

It’s possible that not all leadership team members and managers are on board with changing the workplace culture. These holdouts may undermine the process because some part of the dysfunctional culture stems from their beliefs and values. 

These individuals may subtly encourage employees who don’t change their behavior, refuse to enact penalties or even reward negative behavior. They may continually demonstrate toxic behavior themselves. 

Solution: Before implementing changes, meet with all owners and executives to discuss the current culture’s problems and how they are negatively affecting the company. Bring data demonstrating the current culture’s adverse effects on sales, customer attrition, recruiting costs and other KPIs. Stress how changes can improve everyone’s bottom line. Solicit feedback from everyone and answer the doubters.

2. Employees don’t understand the company culture changes.

It’s difficult to get people to change their behavior if they don’t understand why they’re being asked to change. People get comfortable doing things a specific way, and change is hard. Without a strong motivator, they will keep doing things the old way.

Solution: Call an employee meeting to explain why you’re implementing company culture changes. When employees understand the reasons for change, they are more likely to adjust their behavior and suggest changes in company processes. It’s also crucial to explain how these new expectations will be enforced and the consequences of noncompliance.

3. The workplace culture changes seem too drastic.

Expecting your employees to change how they work instantly is unreasonable. If the new behaviors are completely opposite of everything they’ve been doing, you may encounter resistance and see employees quit. For example, if your sales team culture has always been aggressive, with salespeople instructed to make the sale at any cost, shifting to a more solutions-based and collaborative sales approach will take some time to digest.

Solution: Take smaller steps over time to reach your ultimate goal. Breaking up a larger task into smaller parts will feel less overwhelming to employees and less like a personal rejection of them.

4. You haven’t followed up after implementing culture changes. 

Workplace culture manifests in different ways, depending on various departments and employees. Implementing changes may be an uneven process, and departments may feel stymied or conflicted by another area or a competing imperative.

Solution: During the transition, talk frequently to managers and employees throughout the company. Ask how they feel about the new policies, whether they’ve seen positive changes, and whether they’re confused or challenged by the new expectations. Gathering feedback allows you to tweak your policy or reinforce it as needed.

Focus on the long-term goal

Creating a sustainable change in a company’s entrenched workplace culture is no small feat. Indeed, it’s a significant challenge. However, when done correctly, you can transition to a positive, strong company culture while improving employee engagement and morale. 

Dovilė Gelčinskaitė, senior talent manager at Omnisend, noted that changing a workplace culture requires a distinct understanding of what culture you ultimately want — with its pros and cons. For example, you may prioritize a collaborative culture of teamwork and collective problem-solving; however, accountability must still be clearly delineated. Similarly, a creative culture may thrive on fresh ideas but must balance freedom and focus. Customer-focused cultures may deliver excellent customer service but shouldn’t neglect internal innovation because every effort is directed outward.

“Different workplace culture types offer different benefits and disadvantages,” Gelčinskaitė explained. “The key is to align any chosen culture with the company’s goals and make it a genuine part of daily work, not just empty words.” 

When changing your workplace culture, remember to focus on individuals, not the process, because real change starts with people. While change doesn’t happen overnight, over time, you will see improvements in your company’s KPIs, and the workplace will become happier and more productive and perform at higher levels.