Hi Zee. Do you hear ‘we have a great culture here’ and wonder what that even means?
Well, good. You should absolutely question vague culture statements like that!
Dear Zee, I think my definition of great culture used to look at all the wrong things.
I remember Friday afternoons early in my career fondly… After a hectic week, someone would wheel out the bar cart… people would grab a drink, congregate in the kitchen, laugh, talk shit and eventually wander back to their desks to finish a few things off before the weekend. I won’t deny it, it was fun! It led to some great memories and friendships. But I've been thinking about that workplace lately and wondering: was that actually culture? Or was it a fun perk that we confused with culture?
Companies do this with a ton of things… Pizza parties, summer BBQs, foosball tables, beer fridges, Christmas parties and team-building afternoons. None of those things are bad. I like pizza and beer and games… especially during work hours! But in hindsight, I don't think any of them tell you very much about a company's true culture.
The true culture of your organization really isn’t being tested on a Friday afternoon when everyone is enjoying a complimentary beverage. Instead, culture shows up most on Tuesday morning when something has gone really, terribly wrong. It’s how people respond when there’s pressure, conflict or a mistake to deal with. It’s whether the instinct is to blame and protect… or listen, support and solve the problem together.
If you’re looking at your company and wondering if you have ‘good culture’, start asking yourselves these questions:
What happens when somebody makes an expensive mistake?
What happens when an employee disagrees with their manager?
What happens when the company misses its targets?
What happens when someone needs flexibility because their kid is sick?
What happens when someone says, “I don't think this is working”?
What happens when an employee challenges an idea coming from the CEO?
What happens when somebody takes all of their vacation?
What happens when someone needs a mental-health leave?
What happens when a person shows up at work with a life, identity, family, culture or experience that doesn't look like everyone else's?
That's culture. Culture is all the stuff that happens at work that nobody is putting on Instagram.
Canada's National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety at Work identifies things like organizational culture, psychological and social support, clear leadership and expectations, civility and respect, growth and development, recognition, involvement and influence, workload management, balance and psychological protection as factors in a psychologically healthy workplace. Hey Zee, did you happen to notice that pizza and beer are nowhere on that list?
The Government of Canada describes healthy workplaces in similarly boring terms… employee participation in decisions, clearly defined responsibilities, manageable workloads, learning opportunities, work-life balance, respectful behaviour, conflict-resolution practices and meaningful recognition.
That's the dirty shit I think we need to talk about when we talk about culture. Trust. Accountability. Inclusion. Safety. Growth. Belonging. Autonomy. Fairness. And perhaps one of the biggest ones: Can I be a whole human here?
Culture lives in micro-moments
All those big words sound great on paper, but culture isn't built in policy documents… it lives in the everyday habits and micro-moments of leadership.
I remember a contract position I had a few years back. It was one of my first projects with the agency, and my account lead also happened to be the owner. Intimidating, to say the least. We were in a creative review and there I was (the freelance PM who barely knew the client or the team) when he was asked for his opinion. Instead of jumping in, he said, “Before I say anything, I’d really like to hear what Amanda thinks.”
I’ve been in plenty of creative reviews where the most senior person in the room dominates the conversation, so that moment stuck with me. It was such a simple gesture, but years later, I still remember how it made me feel… like my perspective actually mattered. Imagine if more leaders paused before offering their own opinion and intentionally made space for their teams to speak and be heard. That's not just good management… it's culture in practice. When every interaction aligns like that, culture stops being an abstract idea and becomes the lived experience of your brand.
Building trust, not forcing connection
I’ve read so many posts lately from people who have absolutely no interest in being themselves at work. They don’t want to talk about their lives, get to know their colleagues or let their colleagues get to know them. They want to go in, do their job, collect their paycheque and get out.
This actually makes me sad. Not because I think your coworkers need to become your best friends or that everyone needs to “bring their whole self to work.” You’re absolutely allowed to be private.
There’s a difference between though, between choosing privacy and feeling like you need to protect yourself from the people you spend eight hours a day with. If people have learned that the safest way to navigate work is to reveal as little of themselves as possible, I think we need to start asking what the hell happened in our workplaces to make that feel necessary.
A healthy culture should create enough safety and trust that people can, if they choose:
Say, “I don’t know.”
Challenge an idea without being labelled difficult.
Talk about their family… or choose not to.
Have different cultural or religious practices.
Be themselves without constantly editing who they are.
Set and maintain boundaries.
Have an uncomfortable conversation with their boss.
Screw up, take accountability and learn from it instead of being terrified they’re going to get fired.
The goal isn't to force connection… it's to build a workplace where people don't feel like disconnection is the best option. A genuinely inclusive culture makes room for different perspectives, uncomfortable conversations and even disagreement… and quite frankly I think some of the best ideas come from healthy disagreement. But I’ll tell you one thing, creating that kind of open, trusted environment is a hell of a lot harder than throwing a corporate BBQ.
Where culture starts to intersect with brand
Jane and I have been creeping the careers pages of Canadian companies lately (because apparently this is what we do for fun now) and she found a good one. BC-based Safe Software. Their brand positioning ends with this: “A human-first approach to utilizing the world's data.”
This (of course!) immediately got my attention. “Human-first” is easy to slap onto a website, but real culture is how that promise gets operationalized. Instead of vague perks, they reflect that positioning in their policies: zero waiting periods for benefits, paid parental leave top-ups, annual learning budgets and actual policies to prevent burnout. Safe even reported a voluntary turnover rate of just 1.6%. Does that prove it's a perfect workplace? Of course not. But they keep their story (their brand) consistent throughout… human-first isn't sitting alone in a values document somewhere. It's in their corporate positioning, stated values, benefits, policies, how they talk about community. That's where culture starts to get really interesting to me, because culture isn’t just an HR initiative, it’s your brand operationalized. . Values without systems are basically just fluffy marketing.
I’m sure there are hundreds of organizations out there quietly trying to do things better. Companies that are rethinking what culture actually means and building workplaces where their values show up in the way people are treated, supported and trusted. I really believe it’s time we start shining a light on them. You, Zee, (among others!) deserve to know who’s doing it well. You deserve to know what the bar could look like. And maybe, if we spend a little more time celebrating the workplaces getting it right, we’ll inspire a few more to raise their own bar.
Culture (and brand for that matter!) become real when you operationalize them. This stuff matters because work still takes up a massive chunk of our lives. Statistics Canada found that 32% of working Canadians said work interfered with their home and family life. Among workers aged 35–49, that climbed to 40%. Sure, those numbers aren't specifically measuring “culture,” but they're a pretty good reminder that the way organizations design work follows people home.
This Zee, is why I don't like talking about culture as something fluffy. Culture affects the people and ultimately, their ability to do great work. So when you’re out there interviewing for jobs, don't ask if a company has “good culture”. Because guess what, they’ll probably say yes. You need to ask better questions.
What happens here when somebody makes a mistake?
When was the last time an employee changed a leader's mind?
How do you handle conflict?
Why did the last three people leave this team?
How much vacation did the person interviewing you take last year?
How do people give feedback to leadership?
What happens when somebody's life temporarily becomes more important than their job?
Those answers will tell you far more about culture than ‘what’s the culture like here’? Look closely at the values they claim to hold and ask how they actually live them internally. It's one thing to market values externally to clients, but another thing entirely to apply them to the team behind the scenes. Take your time and find out what a company actually believes… and whether the humans they employ really do come first..