At CultureShift HR, I've always believed that culture isn't something leaders "set" and employees "follow." It's something we build together, through shared ownership, trust, and open dialogue. One of the ways we've done this is by creating what we call "Culture Circles." These are small, cross-functional groups that meet regularly to discuss what's working, what needs rethinking, and how we can make our work more human and effective. Every voice matters equally, mine included. Whether it's revising a process, reimagining our communication rhythms, or shaping how we celebrate milestones, those ideas often come directly from these circles. Because our team is remote, I make space for real connection in between the metrics and meetings. We hold quarterly "Pulse Conversations" where anyone can share what feels misaligned with our values or where they see an opportunity for growth. I don't just want feedback, I act on it. For example, our shift to a more flexible work structure came from a team member who voiced how the traditional workweek didn't reflect how we actually create impact. We listened, adjusted, and productivity and engagement rose almost immediately. Empowering employees to shape the culture isn't just about participation, it's about trust. When people feel trusted to influence the environment they work in, they bring more of themselves to it. That's the real secret to a thriving culture: it's not built from the top down, it's nurtured from the inside out.
Instead of running a top-down culture survey, we empowered employees by initiating the "Culture Catalyst Grant." This was a low-key, untraditional, and entirely employee-driven fund designed to reinforce our core value of "Curiosity." We announced that any group of three or more employees could pitch an idea for a recurring activity or ritual that would make our culture measurably better, receiving up to $500 to run it for three months. We didn't restrict the ideas they could be about wellness, social connection, learning, or community service. The most successful outcome was the launch of our "Skill-Swap Lunch," where employees now teach each other a new skill every Thursday everything from basic Python coding to sourdough baking. This strategy works because it shifts the ownership of culture away from HR and leadership, giving employees a tangible budget and explicit permission to design the workplace they want to be in. The takeaway is that a true culture voice isn't just about asking for feedback; it's about funding the change and granting the autonomy to implement it.
At Sociabble, I've always believed that company culture isn't something defined by leadership. It's something built collectively. One way we empower employees to shape it is by giving them a voice on our own platform. Everyone can share stories, highlight initiatives, and recognize colleagues who embody our values. Over time, this created a living, evolving culture shaped by real people, not slides or slogans. We also host open discussions during our bi-weekly town halls where any topic, even the challenging ones, can be raised anonymously. What I've observed is that when people feel heard and trusted, they don't just adopt the culture, but they own it.
One of the most impactful things I've done to build company culture is invite my team into the process instead of trying to define it for them. Early on, I realized that culture isn't something you announce—it's something you co-create. At She's A Given, I started hosting open Coffee Chats where our virtual assistants could share what was working, what wasn't, and what kind of environment they wanted to be part of. It wasn't a meeting about metrics or performance...it was about belonging. From those conversations came ideas like peer mentorship, celebrating client wins as a team, and spotlighting assistants for things beyond productivity—like compassion, initiative, or creativity. By giving them space to speak honestly (and knowing I'd actually listen), they started taking ownership of the culture themselves. It shifted from "Emilie's company" to our company. Now, when new assistants join, they're welcomed by a community that was built by them, not handed to them. And that's what real culture is—shared ownership of something everyone's proud to protect.
I'm Andy Zenkevich, Founder & CEO at Epiic. Here's how I let my team have a hand in creating our culture at a time when we were scaling fast. The most important change, from my perspective, was sharing control, in the sense of "how,"not just "what." I used to think all you needed to do was tell people exactly what to achieve, and they could have no excuse for not doing it. But Epiic's culture switched modes when I stopped specifying exactly how our work was to get done, and more generally how we operated, and said to leads, "This is how we keep the culture intact," but beyond that, go for it. Restricting values, but not process, was what turned culture into something the team owned The one thing that got the culture to be something the team owned was not some new mission statement but what I did, which was explicitly restricting process in only one respect, our core values, and giving the leads total control over everything else. I drew a box around our pillars: openness, transparency, high-quality output, and mutual respect, and said to leads, "You can redesign everything else from the ground up - how you work internally, how you talk to clients, what internal tools you use." Which meant the marketing team could have their own weekly retro without any input from leads in other parts of the company. Our Operations lead redesigned onboarding, right down to how new hires did their first tasks. Even junior devs tried out plenty of experimental hacks. As a result, we got a relentless influx of new ideas that I would never have dreamed up. Let initiatives come from the floor (followed by some practical tactics) Then we had quarterly "culture sprints," where groups from across the company looked at things like hybrid collaboration and recognition rituals. These initiatives get to come from the teams themselves, not leadership committees. Our only requirement is that any idea be consistent with our core values. Some of the rituals we have now (peer recognition, norms for remote communication) are still fully owned by the team because they came from these culture sprints. And it all works because it says, "This is the culture the teams own." If you want teams that are creative and adaptable, you need to lock down the values, but let people figure out the how.
Empowering our teammates to contribute to the creation of the company culture means being consistent in supporting bottom-up initiatives to me. About ten years ago a support consultant came to me with an idea of making ecological awareness a part of our culture. She talked about small sustainable habits in her own life and suggested we do a similar thing around the office. I could really tell she was passionate about sustainability, and since I shared her views, I was excited to support her. That's how she organically became our sustainability ambassador and we started developing this vector of our company culture. It also helped that the majority of the leadership team already felt strongly for eco-friendly initiatives. At some point our CIO, Nick Riabchenko, held an internal recycling workshop. Years from then, our ecological commitments were officially folded into our social responsibility strategy. At the same time, as we grew to over 2000 people globally, our team communication naturally became more structured. Even with all that growth, I wanted to make sure teammates still had a safe place to talk about our culture. So, we introduced regular one-on-ones, supported by our People Experience Team. We designed those meetings as pressure-free check-ins to encourage an open exchange. As a result of our ecological habits, we managed to switch three quarters of our office detergents for eco options, and we successfully recycled over a thousand tetra packs and kilograms of batteries. This is how one idea from a support consultant grew into a part of our corporate culture and shaped daily routines years later. It definitely taught us that grassroot initiatives may have lasting positive effects on businesses.
One way I've empowered employees to help build our company culture was by creating open spaces for feedback and collaboration, not just during performance reviews but as part of our everyday rhythm. For example, we started holding monthly culture check-ins where team members could openly share what's working, what's not, and suggest new ideas to improve how we work together. Some of our best initiatives — like flexible work hours and peer-recognition shoutouts — actually came from those sessions. By listening and implementing their suggestions, we showed that their voices truly mattered. That sense of ownership made everyone more invested in the culture we were building. The biggest lesson I learned is that culture grows stronger when it's built with your team, not for them.
To us, company culture is something that has to be cultivated by participation, not administration. Being a fast-paced startup, we believe that every opinion counts. So, we formed a culture committee that is made up of different team members from the development team, the marketing department, to the support team. This committee meets to talk about employee engagement, feedback, and suggestions for team-building activities. We also encourage employees to present activities or suggestions that could lead to improved employee morale or communication. For instance, we took a suggestion from our developers that resulted in "Innovation Fridays," where any employee can spend a few hours every week exploring new ideas for Paige by Merchynt. This gave us a chance to let our employees explore and feel a sense of ownership when it comes to the growth of our AI SEO tool, Paige by Merchynt. Additionally, we conduct open workshops for our employees, where the leadership discusses how company goals relate to each employee's performance. When employees see how their contribution affects our clients using Paige, it leads to a boost in employee morale since every employee feels that they share a collective vision for the company.
We implemented a regular check-in system where I personally met with employees to actively listen to their concerns and ideas about improving our workplace. These sessions created a forum where team members could openly share feedback about company practices, suggest improvements, and feel that their voices truly mattered in shaping our culture. I made sure to provide transparency about our challenges while connecting their input directly to company decisions, showing them how their contributions were influencing our direction. This approach built trust and gave employees ownership in creating a culture they wanted to be part of.
We started an employee led cultural forum with rotating, peer nominated representatives from each team. The forum operates on three straightforward rules: help first by responding to a request for assistance even if it is not your job, promote teamwork by connecting the right team member when your time or skills are limited , and keep the initiative going by not letting things drag on. By emphasizing teamwork, the organization brings people together and provides reassurance and support to all. Representatives obtain input by collecting pulse surveys and then work collaboratively with leadership to focus on prioritizing themes. We conduct quarterly anonymous votes for what to stop, start and continue, and then publish the top three with owners, timelines and a small implementation budget to ensure ideas from employees can translate into authentic cultural change.
I focused on building an inclusive culture by implementing diverse communication channels including suggestion boxes, town hall meetings, and one-on-one sessions with leadership. These channels created multiple opportunities for team members at all levels to contribute their ideas about our workplace environment and values. Our managers were also trained to maintain a genuine open-door policy, ensuring every employee felt comfortable sharing feedback and suggestions. This approach helped team members feel truly valued while giving them meaningful ownership in shaping our company culture.
I've found that the best way to build culture is to listen and act on employee ideas. Instead of leaders deciding everything on their own, we invite employees to share ideas, suggest initiatives, and organize activities that are related to learning and growth. We also host regular open forums and anonymous surveys where employees give their opinions and raise concerns without hesitation. It's like their safe place where they can speak without being judged. Over time, by actively listening to and implementing their suggestions has boosted our culture and created a more comfortable environment. When employees see their ideas being valued and acted upon, they feel more comfortable sharing innovative ideas and creating a strong work culture.
The team initiated a process where engineers needed to describe their preferred team structure through specific behavioral examples beyond just organizational values. The team collected all this information before a small group of team members worked together to transform it into operational processes for code reviews and feature planning and new hire onboarding. The process operated without top-down control because team members witnessed their input transform into functional changes. The developers requested better visibility into how decisions get made so we implemented this change. The team created a Confluence page for architectural decision documentation which allowed all members to review and propose alternative solutions through comment functionality. The implementation of this small change brought increased collaboration to our team while enabling new members to participate in discussions from the beginning.
In fact, I did allow our employees to determine the organizational culture by involving them in decisions. We have provided an example of an open forum where anyone could present ideas on how we would make our processes better and how we would impress our customers. That made them feel heard and stake holders to where we are headed. We created an actual team spirit and team ownership through the selection of letting employees run the ship. It has played a major role in ensuring that there is a culture of closeness and oneness where no one feels like they are unwanted and have no stake.
By actually giving them an input into how culture is shaped based on the type of working environment they want to be in, rather than telling them what the culture is (or what the expectations are) and assuming they'll want to fall into pre-defined expectations.
By ensuring that new employee input in particular in regards to culture-shaping feedback is present right from the onboarding stages. This is often critical as it gives much more of a fresher outlook on company culture as a whole based on opinions and perceptions from those who are not used to it already (and you can use this feedback to help shape culture for new employees moving forward).
We are an AI-First company, and that means always asking ourselves how we can do things better or faster with AI. It's important for us to have this mindset because we train other companies on adopting AI, and we want to lead by example. So, I encourage all our team members to suggest new ways to use AI, or automations they'd like to build to make their jobs easier. This helps to get everyone always thinking AI-First, looking for the fastest and best way to do things, and gives team members the opportunity to come up with ways to improve our workflow, also empowering them to make changes in the way we work.
Culture isn't something you write on a wall; it's something you live every day with the people you work alongside. It's co-created. One of the ways I've empowered my team to shape that culture is by intentionally blurring the line between teaching and doing. We bring on interns, not as free labor but as paid, valued team members. And we don't just hand them tasks and hope for the best. We invest in them. In my book Interns to A-Players, I talk about how the process of developing interns into excellent contributors is not just about giving them busy work. It's about creating opportunities for them to develop the skills they need to be successful, teaching them how to add real value to the company while shaping their growth as professionals. Take Bushra, for example. She is a trained pharmacist from Saudi Arabia, and when she joined us, she barely knew what a sales funnel was. Fast forward a few months, she's writing email campaigns, making SDR calls, and teaching us how her scientific mindset brings precision to marketing. Or Veronica, from Italy she came in shy, unsure of how LinkedIn worked. Now, she runs it like a pro. Every week, we do feedback both ways. What is working? What is frustrating? How can we do better as a team, as leaders? That's not a trick, that's how we make sure no one's wasting anyone's time. Interns to A-Players outlines how we ensure every intern is treated as a partner in our mission, rather than just an extra pair of hands. We've got a culture that's built on curiosity, contribution, and real conversations across countries, across backgrounds, and across disciplines. And that culture doesn't belong to me. It belongs to all of us. Peter Murphy Lewis CEO, Strategic Pete: https://strategicpete.com/ Coach to 200+ interns, Author of Interns to A-Players: https://petermurphylewis.com/book/interns-to-a-players-home https://www.linkedin.com/in/petermurphylewis/
I came home from Afghanistan knowing I didn't want to work for someone else, but when I hired my first employee I realized that mindset had to flip--I needed to make them *not* feel like they were working for someone else either. The biggest example was when my wife joined the business for community events. At the Rio Linda Country Faire, I was planning to just hand out flyers and answer questions, but she pushed to bring actual live bugs and specimens to show kids. I thought it was risky--parents might freak out--but I let her run with it. Now those bug education sessions are our signature at every community event, and we get parents specifically asking when we'll be at the next one. She owns that entire part of our presence, and honestly it's way better than anything I would've designed. The "Lego Dan" thing happened the same way. I started leaving mini Lego figures of myself at customers' homes as a signature, and one of my techs suggested we turn it into a photo contest where customers could win free services. I thought it sounded gimmicky, but he set up the whole system--rules, monthly prizes, email collection, everything. We got hundreds of entries, and our repeat customer rate jumped because people actually *wanted* to stay engaged with us between services. I learned from the military that the person closest to the problem usually has the best solution. My job became saying "yes" and staying out of the way, not designing everything myself.
I run a marketing company, and the best cultural shift we made was when I stopped controlling every client message and let my team own the voice we put out there. We have these quick conference table sessions where everyone weighs in on major decisions--I've literally walked in thinking one direction and left implementing someone else's idea because it was just better. The breakthrough moment was when I told my team: if you think something needs to change, change it. Don't wait for my approval. I hire people to tell me what to do, not the other way around--that's what I'm paying them for. One of my staff completely redesigned how we handle client onboarding because they saw a pain point I'd missed, and our client satisfaction immediately improved. Here's what actually made it stick: I fall on the sword when things go wrong, but I put my team in the spotlight when things go right. At industry events and in interviews, I talk about them, not me. When employees know they'll get the credit and you'll take the heat, they stop playing it safe and start building something real.