Company culture (or organizational culture) shapes everything that makes work feel real: motivation, collaboration, decision-making, customer service quality, innovation and even retention. In short, it’s not a slogan on a wall or a polished image on social media. It’s a shared system of reference points that guides behaviors and defines employees’ everyday experience across the organization.
Read on to discover the key components of a company’s culture, the four most well-known types of company culture, and how to build and sustain a strong culture (with inspiring examples from organizations in Canada!).
What is company culture?
Company culture is the set of shared values, norms, behaviors, and practices that shape how people work, communicate, and make decisions within an organization. It shows up in leadership, rituals, priorities, and day-to-day relationships.
The key elements of company culture
The core components of company culture are always the same:
Core values and organizational mission
Every company should define its core values; those intrinsic principles that guide the shared goals the entire organization works toward.
In summary:
- Values define “how we do things here.”
- The mission explains the “why” (meaning) and direction.
Together, mission and values broadly define the company’s vision and organizational culture. They provide a foundation for alignment and guide business decisions over time.
Norms and expected behaviors
Your employee handbook should outline the rules and standards that apply to all employees, as well as the attitudes and behaviors you want to promote in the workplace. These norms can include expected dress code, how professional relationships should be handled, your approach to teamwork, and more.
Other rules are more implicit, yet just as crucial for building a strong company culture: how feedback is shared and performance is evaluated, which qualities are especially valued (autonomy, speed of execution, quality of work, mutual support, etc.), and which behaviors are tolerated — or not.
Management style (leadership)
Your management style depends on the size of your organization (a startup often operates differently than a large company), your industry, and the organizational values mentioned above. It refers to the management practices adopted and promoted not only by the executive team, but also by directors, supervisors, and team leads across the organization.
For example, leadership may emphasize accountability, coaching, transparency, or control. These approaches influence company values and how employees work every day. Ideally, a healthy company culture supports a leadership style that balances performance and employee well-being.
Employee relationships
A company’s culture is also reflected in:
- the level of trust (or lack of trust) between colleagues;
- psychological safety;
- cross-team collaboration;
- the place given to diverse perspectives.
The norms and leadership style established by the organization directly shape employee relationships. Some companies prioritize collaboration and team building, while others adopt a strategy centered on individual performance.
Company culture vs organizational climate: what’s the difference?
Company culture and organizational climate are often confused, but they’re not the same thing. Here’s a simple explanation:
- Organizational culture: deeper and more stable. It’s the organization’s intrinsic “system” (values, beliefs, norms, ways of making decisions).
- Organizational climate: more perceptual and changeable. It’s employees’ perception of how they are treated “right now”, much like an internal weather report.
For example, a company can officially promote an authentic, collaborative culture, yet experience a difficult climate during a reorganization (stress, tension, uncertainty).
The 4 types of company culture
- Collaborative culture: emphasizes a family spirit, mutual support, closeness, learning, and cohesion.
- Innovation culture (also called entrepreneurial culture or adhocracy): built on innovation, experimentation, agility, a right to make mistakes, and initiative.
- Hierarchical culture: focuses on structure, clearly defined processes, stability, clear rules, quality, and risk management.
- Market culture: centered on performance, goals, competition, results and customer focus, and efficiency.
Many companies combine multiple cultural elements, but still maintain one dominant culture type.
How to build and sustain a strong company culture?
1. Clearly define the company’s mission and values
The first step is to clarify why the company exists (mission) and how it wants to operate (values). The classic pitfall is choosing values that are too generic (“respect,” “excellence,” “innovation”) and don’t change anything in day-to-day work.
To avoid this, turn each value into observable behaviors: what you do when things are going well, but especially what you do when things get hard (disagreement, urgency, unhappy customers, pressure to hit targets). A good value should help answer this question: “In this situation, what do we do?”
Here are a few practical tips:
- Limit your list to 4–6 values max so employees aren’t lost in an endless list.
- For each value, define 3 expected behaviors and 3 behaviors to avoid.
- To make it crystal clear, write a simple sentence such as: “Here, a good decision is one that…” (for example, “is clear, explained, and useful to the customer”).
2. Translate culture into everyday practices
Many company cultures remain theoretical instead of becoming anchored in employees’ real work experience.
It’s important to remember that culture is built less in presentations and more through repeated “small” practices: how you plan, how you communicate, how you solve problems, and how you recognize great work.
If your values say “autonomy,” but every decision must be approved at three levels, the real message is “control.” The goal is to align your rituals and rules of the game with what you want to encourage.
Concretely, you can:
- Formalize 5 collaboration rules (response times, communication channels, required documentation, banning “default” meetings).
- Create a short playbook called “how we work here” (1–2 pages is enough to provide clear guidance everyone can reference).
- Review meetings so each one includes a purpose, a decision needed, an owner (or owners), and a clear next step.
3. Ensure leadership truly embodies the culture
It’s easy to write company culture into an employee handbook or on a website… but living it every day is another story.
Leaders and managers send the strongest signals: what they tolerate, what they reward, and how they manage conflict and feedback. A strong culture is a consistent culture: what you value is visible in the behaviors of the people with influence.
To make culture show up in the way you lead, we recommend:
- Defining a few non-negotiable management expectations (for example, regular 1:1s, constructive feedback, aligning team goals with organizational goals, weekly workload check-ins).
- Training supervisors on key skills that support your culture (feedback, coaching, conflict management).
- Evaluating them on the “how” (behaviors), not only the “what” (results).
4. Hire and onboard in line with your culture
Recruitment and onboarding are moments when culture gets transmitted quickly—or broken.
Be careful with poorly applied “culture fit”: if you hire people “who look like us,” you reduce diversity and weaken innovation. Instead, aim for balance: prioritize candidates aligned with your values, while also ensuring they bring new perspectives and skills into the organization.
For culture-based hiring, it’s essential to:
- Turn values into interview questions (for example: “Tell me about a time you gave or received difficult feedback.”).
- Standardize an evaluation scorecard that includes shared values (result: less bias, more consistency).
- During the employee onboarding process, run a session on collaboration rules—with real examples—to guide new hires from the start.
5. Strengthen the work environment (clarity, psychological safety, recognition)
A strong culture doesn’t aim to be “cool.” It’s first and foremost sustainable and balanced. If employees are exhausted, unclear on priorities, or afraid to raise issues with leadership, culture degrades—even if your values look great on paper.
The foundation is clarity: expectations, roles, priorities, workload. Next comes psychological safety: the ability to ask questions, admit mistakes, and share ideas without fear of humiliation.
To create a safe work environment that supports both performance and employee well-being, you can:
- Set a prioritization routine (for example, weekly) to prevent “silent” overload.
- Introduce shared language to define what’s urgent, what’s important, and what can wait.
- Normalize mistakes: run constructive, blameless post-mortems, encourage shared learning, and reflect together on what you’d do differently in the future.
6. Involve employees in building the culture
A culture imposed from the top won’t last long. Culture becomes stronger when people feel like co-authors.
Involving employees doesn’t mean deciding everything by consensus. It means creating spaces where they can contribute directly: team rituals, process improvements, well-being initiatives, and how you celebrate wins. The more people see their footprint in the culture, the more they protect it—and the stronger the sense of belonging becomes.
In practice, this means:
- Organizing team workshops focused on values and behaviors, then creating a shared synthesis.
- Creating identity rituals such as monthly demos, lunch & learns, recognition moments, and sharing individual and team wins.
- Setting up a simple channel to propose improvements—and providing fast, transparent responses.
7. Measure and adjust continuously
A strong culture isn’t fixed: it adapts to growth, team changes, and market conditions.
Measuring doesn’t mean drowning everyone in surveys. It means tracking a few regular indicators to spot early signals: lack of clarity, declining trust, weakening collaboration, and more. The key is to follow this continuous improvement loop: measure → share → decide → act.
In summary:
- Send quarterly pulse surveys (max 10 questions).
- Track key HR indicators (turnover, absenteeism, eNPS, internal mobility, satisfaction after recruitment and onboarding).
- After each survey, share about 3 insights + 3 actions + a timeline for improvements. If the process isn’t transparent, employee trust will drop.
8. Embed culture into HR systems (recognition, performance, promotions)
Culture becomes sustainable when it’s built into systems: recognition, performance reviews, promotions, variable compensation, and development. If you say “collaboration” but only promote solo heroes, you create a contradictory culture. The idea is simple: reward the behaviors and actions you want to see over the long term.
For example, you can:
- Include cultural behaviors in performance evaluations (for instance, a 30% “how,” 70% “what” balance).
- Create a peer recognition and reward mechanism.
- Clearly define promotion and raise criteria, with concrete examples.
9. Protect culture during “high-risk” periods
Culture often becomes fragile during organizational change: hypergrowth, reorganization, mergers, leadership departures, economic downturns. In these moments, people look for reference points. If the company doesn’t make clear what remains true, everyone interprets things differently—and culture becomes inconsistent. In these contexts, protecting culture means over-communicating priorities, decisions, purpose, what’s changing, and what isn’t.
Concretely:
- Repeat “what isn’t changing” + “what is changing” (and explain why).
- Set up regular touchpoints to address employees’ questions and concerns.
- Keep a close eye on teams under pressure (new hires, remote employees, teams facing heavy workloads).
Examples of Inspiring Company Cultures
Here are some examples of Canadian companies that have built and maintained inspired company cultures :
- Oppono Lending Company: A financial services company gaining recognition for culture practices centered on respect, creativity, and employee support.
- Great Little Box Company: A packaging company recognized multiple times for being a top employer with an employee-first culture focused on engagement, growth, and recognition.
- PureLogic IT Solutions: A smaller Canadian tech firm known for flexible policies and a culture that emphasizes well-being, inclusivity, and team collaboration.
- Isaac Operations LTD: A mid-size employer spotlighted for reinventing office culture with strong internal engagement and purpose-driven work.
- Centre for Effective Practice: The Centre for Effective Practice (CEP) is one of Canadas leading independent healthcare behavior-change partners, with a clear mission and statement.
Company culture isn’t an optional HR project: it’s the collective operating system that influences decisions, engagement, and performance. The good news is that it can be built, clarified, and strengthened, as long as you translate it into concrete behaviors, embed it in leadership, and measure it regularly.
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