Organizational culture is the invisible force that shapes how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how employees experience their day-to-day roles. Yet, for something so influential, culture is notoriously difficult to measure and manage. The key to unraveling its complexities? Listening to employees.
As Ted Vaughn and Mark Miller explain in Culture Built My Brand, culture isn’t a set of values hanging on a wall; it’s how those values come to life in daily behaviors. Employee listening is the bridge between leadership’s vision for culture and the reality of what employees experience. By listening well, organizations can align their culture with their strategic goals, adapt to challenges, and foster environments where people thrive.
Culture Drives Performance: Organizations with strong, intentional cultures see better outcomes — greater engagement, higher retention, and stronger financial performance. But culture isn’t static. It requires constant tending and recalibration to meet the needs of employees and the business. Listening provides the insights leaders need to keep culture aligned with their goals.
Feedback Builds Trust: When employees feel heard, they are more likely to trust their leaders and invest in the organization’s success. Listening shows respect and signals that leadership values their perspectives. Over time, this strengthens the social fabric of the organization and reinforces a culture of mutual accountability.
Uncover Hidden Gaps: Culture can’t be dictated from the top. Leaders often miss signs of disconnection — whether it’s exclusion, misaligned values, or burnout — until they escalate into bigger problems. Listening uncovers these gaps early, allowing leaders to address them before they undermine performance or morale.
Clarify Your Purpose: Listening should have a clear goal. Are you gathering feedback on a recent change, assessing alignment with core values, or identifying barriers to engagement? Being transparent about the purpose helps employees feel more comfortable sharing candid insights and insights that will enable leaders to make more informed decisions with greater speed and confidence.
Use Diverse Listening Methods: To capture a full picture of your culture, combine quantitative and qualitative approaches. Perceptyx’s research consistently shows that more mature and effective organizations effectively integrate different listening methods for greater insights.
Focus on the Everyday Experience: Culture is felt most acutely in the small, daily interactions that shape how employees work and collaborate. Ask questions about communication, collaboration, recognition, and fairness to understand whether your values are reflected in these everyday moments.
After You Ask, Act on What You Hear: Employee listening loses its power if it doesn’t lead to action. We also know that employees don’t naturally connect the dots between the feedback they share and improvements that are made within the organization. Share the themes you’ve uncovered and how you plan to address them. Even small, incremental changes signal that leadership is serious about improving the culture. For example, “You shared that decision-making feels slow and unclear. We’re introducing clearer project ownership and decision guidelines to address this.”
Make Listening a Continuous Process: Culture and experiences are always evolving, so listening should be an ongoing effort. Regular feedback cycles — whether quarterly surveys or monthly team check-ins — help you track how culture shifts over time and whether changes are having the desired effect.
In Culture Built My Brand, Ted Vaughn and Mark Miller argue that culture is most authentic when employees live out the organization’s values in ways that are visible to customers. This connection between internal culture and external brand is a critical, often overlooked element of cultural health.
For leaders, this underscores the importance of not just listening but closing the feedback loop. When employees see their insights translated into meaningful change, they’re more likely to feel connected to the organization’s values. This authenticity then ripples outward, strengthening both the internal culture and the external perception of the brand.
At its heart, culture is about people. Managing it effectively requires leaders to go beyond policies and initiatives to truly understand the human side of the organization. Employee listening is the most direct way to do this.
By consistently gathering, analyzing, and acting on employee feedback, organizations can create cultures that reflect their values, adapt to new challenges, and support both individual and collective success. Listening doesn’t just help measure culture — it helps shape it, one conversation at a time.
To learn how Perceptyx can assist you with fostering the dialogue needed to manage your culture, schedule a meeting with a member of our team.