Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion

How to improve company culture in 2025

January 23, 2025

8 min read

Content Marketing Specialist

As a leader within your organization, your job includes not only the effective execution of processes and projects, but also the positive development of team dynamics, talent support, and working environment.

Take steps to improve company culture, retain great talent, and ultimately, lead a more successful team.

Learn more about building communities within your organization, strengthening connections, and fostering stronger company culture in Becker's CPE podcast series, Balancing the Future!

What is company culture?

Company culture is your organizational DNA: the heartbeat that drives your operations, guides your decision-making, and reflects in the feedback from your customers.

Successful company culture is the combination of shared values, work ethic, and goals that guide how employees and team members approach their jobs and do their work. Team members feel and subscribe to company culture through your mission and values, employee recognition, celebrations, events, and how you react to employee performance.¹

Why is company culture important?

Company culture has been a trending concept in the business world—and for good reason. It may not seem like the fuel powering your sales and operations, but it is the key to growth and success as an organization.

Benefits of company culture for employers

Employers and business leaders rely on company culture to unite and motivate their teams.

Part of good leadership strategy is to create and improve company culture, giving staff more opportunity for involvement and a more personal connection to their job, the company’s mission, and their teammates. It’s no secret that people invest where they feel valued and where they believe in what they’re doing.

Benefits of good company culture from a leadership perspective include:¹

Increased talent retention
Higher productivity
Attractive for new talent acquisition
Better customer retention
More employee participation
More innovation and problem-solving

Benefits of company culture for employees

Jobseekers often look for a company with a strong culture that aligns with their own values and working styles. Company culture can be important for employees to:

Feel motivated at work
Feel recognized and valued
Feel safe, productive, and free to express new ideas
Believe in their work and company goals
Connect with teammates
Improve job satisfaction
Experience overall well-being

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How to improve company culture

Ready to improve company culture for your organization? There’s no one formula, but you must be intentional, assessing your current company culture and constantly looking for ways to adapt to your employees’ feedback and needs.

Start to improve company culture by implementing these important steps.^{2 3}

Communicate your values.

Every organization defines its core values—the principles that guide its purpose, decision-making, and processes. However, not all organizations effectively communicate these values to employees.

Improve company culture by making sure that your team members know your values. This means more than just seeing them once during their onboarding; you should continually reiterate values in organization-wide communications and events.

Take action!

If your core values live only on your website and employee onboarding slides, get them front and center! Make sure they’re peppered into your team communications, email signature, or everyday conversations as you approach making decisions and leading your teams.

Live out your values.

It’s not enough to communicate your values. You MUST live them. When you lead by example, your team will see that you’re not just talk, and that your values really are the cornerstone that shapes and fuels your operations. This inspires them to follow suit in their jobs, as part of a team movement that’s driven by these principles.

Take action!

Consider each one of your organization’s core values and find at least one way to apply it in action in your daily work.

Support professional growth.

Invest in your team members. This will improve company culture by showing that you value each professional enough to help them reach their individual goals, whether or not these directly relate to your bottom line.

(And likely, supporting professional development will also better your services and increase team productivity!)

Take action!

Take the initiative to provide professional development programs for your team members. You may schedule time for individual learning, offer an online course platform, plan training events, or set aside a yearly budget available for each person’s learning.

Prioritize transparency and communication.

Communication and transparency build trust. Lead with open communication by sharing the good and the bad with your teams, including team members in important conversations and decisions, and likewise empowering their opinions and feedback in the process. Plus, you can only improve company culture if your teams communicate their ideas on what can be better.

Be a great communicator, encourage this quality in your employees, and you’ll see how they become more involved, more open, and even more creative in the new ideas they share.

Take action!

Set multiple avenues that encourage transparency and reciprocal communication. These may include anonymous surveys, individual and team feedback meetings, or reoccurring teamwide strategy meetings to brainstorm ideas and share progress.

Give thoughtful feedback.

In the spirit of open communication, assess your employees’ work and give honest feedback. This will show your team members that you care about their work and are invested in helping them improve and grow.

This is also an opportunity to lift up employees and praise their jobs well done.

Take action!

Put a recurring task on the calendar—it may be monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually—where each manager performs individual reviews for their team members, then meeting to share feedback and discuss goals.

Celebrate, recognize, and reward performance.

When your teams score a win, celebrate! Rewarding their efforts helps them feel valued and that their hard work is worth the effort. Recognition and rewards also lift team spirits, enhance productivity, and provide an environment where hard-working employees want to join and stay.

Take action!

Set up an employee recognition program, reward team and individual victories, and publicly applaud team members for a job well done.

Encourage human connection.

Team dynamics and human relationships weave together a healthy and productive workforce. To improve company culture, find ways to strengthen team friendships. You’ll see the results in ovearll performance and talent retention.

Take action!

Plan team events that give your employees the chance to get to know each other outside of the job. Ideas include a weekly luncheon or monthly happy hour. Even if your offices are remote, you can plan a reoccurring trivia hour or casual virtual lunch.

Stream free Becker podcasts to improve company culture

Find out more about how to improve company culture through Becker Podcasts that dive into strategies around talent acquisition, core values, and fomenting professional growth within your teams.

On-topic episodes from industry experts include these and more:

Stream Becker Podcasts for free, wherever you get your podcasts. Then, earn continuing professional education (CPE) credits for listening to these podcasts through your Prime CPE subscription.