How to Improve Company Culture and Boost Engagement

Improving your company culture is really about creating an environment where people feel seen, valued, and connected to something bigger than just their to-do list. This isn't about adding a ping-pong table; it’s about investing in transparent communication, meaningful recognition, and genuine connection. Think of it as a continuous investment in your team—one that pays off in big ways.

Why Investing in Company Culture Is No Longer Optional

Treating company culture as a "nice-to-have" is a surefire way to run into serious business problems. It's not a soft metric anymore; it's a critical driver of performance, retention, and, yes, your bottom line.

A disengaged workplace isn't just a quiet one. It’s actively costing you money through lost productivity, high turnover, and rampant burnout. Ignoring the health of your internal environment is a business risk you can't afford to take.

When people don't feel connected to their work or their colleagues, their motivation nosedives and innovation stalls. This kicks off a vicious cycle where your best talent starts heading for the exit, taking valuable knowledge and experience with them.

✦The Real Cost of a Disengaged Workforce

Employee engagement isn't just a buzzword; it's a direct reflection of your company's health. And right now, the outlook is pretty grim. Recent data reveals that only 30% of employees globally feel engaged at work—the lowest point in over a decade.

This slump is often tied to overwhelming workloads and poor communication from leadership, and it has real-world consequences.

This widespread disengagement creates tangible problems for businesses:

Sky-High Turnover: Disengaged employees are 56% more likely to be actively looking for a new job.
Sinking Productivity: The cost of disengagement is staggering, adding up to roughly 34% of an employee's annual salary in lost output.

A thriving culture acts as a shield against these issues. It builds loyalty, encourages people to go the extra mile, and creates a place where everyone genuinely wants to do their best work.

✦Creating a Culture That Lasts

Building a strong culture takes a deliberate and ongoing effort. It’s about weaving your core values into everything you do, from hiring and onboarding to daily interactions and how you celebrate wins.

This foundational work is what sets you up for a resilient and motivated team. For a deeper dive into making sustainable changes, you can find more actionable strategies on how to improve workplace culture that actually lasts. The goal is to shift from simply managing people to truly empowering them.

Create a Culture of Connection and Belonging

Let's be honest, a great company culture isn't built on forced fun or awkward team-building exercises. It comes from genuine human connection. It's that feeling of trust and camaraderie that turns a group of people into a real team that has each other's backs.

Creating opportunities for people to actually connect is where the magic happens.

Company events are a fantastic way to do this, whether you're all in the office, fully remote, or a mix of both. They give everyone a chance to step away from the daily grind and just be people together. But more often than not, the idea of planning an event dies before it even gets started. Why? Because it's a hassle.

The sheer logistics of scheduling, sending invites, and chasing down RSVPs are enough to make anyone give up. This friction is especially killer for those spontaneous get-togethers, like a last-minute happy hour, which are often the best for boosting morale.

✦Making Connection Effortless with the Right Tools

If your team lives in Slack and Google Calendar, you can pretty much wipe out these planning headaches. The trick is to use tools that work with your existing flow, not against it. For companies using both platforms, coordinating events can still be a clumsy, multi-step process. The last thing anyone needs is another app to learn or another login to remember.

This is where a tool like Be There really shines. It's not just another platform; it's a powerful integration that plugs right into your Slack workspace, acting as the perfect bridge to Google Calendar. Anyone on the team can create an event in a channel with a quick command. As soon as people RSVP, a Google Calendar invite automatically zips out to them. It’s an incredibly handy way to streamline event planning for teams already invested in the Slack and Google Calendar ecosystem.

This simple setup removes all the usual roadblocks. Suddenly, it’s not a big deal to organize something. It empowers people to build community from the ground up, which always feels more authentic than top-down, mandated fun.

When it’s easy to get together, it happens more often. Simple as that.

Here’s how this plays out in the real world: Your project team just finished a grueling two-week sprint. The team lead wants to celebrate with a happy hour. Instead of starting a messy email chain or a storm of DMs, she just types in the team’s Slack channel: /bethere Happy Hour @ The Local Pub today at 5 PM. Anyone who clicks "I'm in!" gets the calendar invite instantly. What could have been a logistical mess becomes a simple, fun celebration that brings the team closer.

✦The Impact of Engaged and Connected Teams

Fostering this kind of connection isn't just a "nice-to-have"—it has a direct impact on your business. Globally, only about 21% of employees feel engaged at work, which translates into a staggering loss of productivity.

Managers have a huge role to play here; their influence accounts for 70% of team engagement. When you get it right, the results speak for themselves. Highly engaged teams see 78% lower absenteeism and can even lift customer ratings by 10%.

If you're curious to see more data, check out these eye-opening workplace culture statistics.

Create a Culture of Meaningful Recognition

When people feel genuinely valued, they don't just work for you; they become true partners in your company's success. Building a system for recognition isn't about awkward, forced applause in a meeting. It's about weaving appreciation into the very fabric of your daily operations, making it an authentic, regular habit.

True recognition is more than a generic "good job." It’s specific. It's timely. And it connects directly to how an employee's contribution moved the needle or how they lived out one of the company's core values. When that praise feels earned and personal, it creates a powerful sense of belonging and lights a fire in people to keep bringing their A-game.

A simple, powerful first step? Kick off a dedicated Slack channel for 'wins' or 'kudos'. This gives everyone a public space to celebrate a colleague's success, whether it's for landing a huge deal or just stepping up to help a teammate who was swamped. This kind of peer-to-peer shoutout often feels more authentic than a formal, top-down award.

✦Go Beyond Casual Shoutouts

While informal high-fives in Slack are fantastic for morale, a more structured program ensures that recognition is consistent and fair. Let's be honest, without a system, it's easy for recognition to become a popularity contest, and the quiet, heads-down contributors who are just as valuable can get overlooked.

This is where building a framework with clear criteria comes in. What specific actions or outcomes are you rewarding? How do they directly tie back to your company's mission and values? A solid framework ensures everyone gets a fair shake and consistently reinforces the exact behaviors you want to see more of. If you're looking for inspiration, you can explore tons of different employee recognition program ideas to see what might fit your team.

✦The Real Impact of a Caring Culture

At the end of the day, recognition is one of the most powerful ways to show you care. And the data doesn't lie. Research shows that when people feel their company genuinely cares about them, the results are staggering. They are 84% less likely to burn out and 30% less likely to look for another job.

Even better, these employees are 12 times more likely to be highly engaged and 7 times more likely to be top performers. You can dig into more of these incredible stats in this report on the impact of a caring culture on Tanner.com.

Meaningful recognition is a direct investment in your people. It's the difference between an employee who just clocks in and out and one who feels like they're truly building something great alongside you.

To make appreciation a daily habit, you need to make it easy. Here are a few practical ways to get started:

Tie it to your values. Create monthly or quarterly awards that are directly linked to each of your company's core values.
Empower your managers. Give team leads the ability to grant small, on-the-spot bonuses for exceptional work that deserves immediate acknowledgment.
Make it personal. Ditch the generic gift cards. Offer experiences or rewards that actually align with an employee's hobbies and interests.

By building a thoughtful recognition system, you're not just saying "thanks." You're actively creating a culture where every single person feels seen, valued, and fired up to do their best work.

Improve Transparency Through Better Communication

Trust is the currency of any great company culture. How do you earn it? Through open, honest, and consistent communication. When people have a clear line of sight into the company's direction—the good, the bad, and the ugly—they feel respected and connected to the mission. Without that transparency, you’re left with a breeding ground for rumors, disengagement, and a team that feels completely out of the loop.

Let’s be clear: improving communication isn't about flooding inboxes with more emails. It's about building a predictable rhythm for sharing information. Think regular all-hands meetings where leadership is refreshingly candid about wins and challenges. It’s also about having a clear, central place for important documents so everyone knows exactly where to find the single source of truth.

✦Opening Up the Channels for Feedback

Real transparency isn't a monologue; it's a conversation. This means you have to create safe, open channels for your team to ask the tough questions and share what’s on their minds without looking over their shoulder.

A few things I’ve seen work wonders:

Host regular AMAs ("Ask Me Anything") with leadership. It’s a simple but powerful way to flatten hierarchies and foster real dialogue.
Send out weekly internal updates on key decisions and project progress. When people understand the why behind a decision, they're far more likely to get behind it.

Creating this kind of open environment often starts with ensuring your communication methods are reliable. Exploring best practices for secure business communication is a great first step to building that foundation of trust.

This flow chart gives a great overview of how to plan activities that genuinely build team cohesion.

As you can see, it’s a simple, repeatable framework: figure out your goals, plan the right activities, and actually listen to the feedback. This ensures your efforts are strategic, not just another pizza party.

✦Communication Methods for Different Team Needs

Choosing the right channel for your message is just as important as the message itself. Here’s a quick breakdown to help you match the method to the moment.

Communication Method	Best For	Frequency	Key Benefit
All-Hands Meetings	Sharing major company updates, celebrating wins, and leadership Q&A.	Monthly or Quarterly	Aligns the entire organization and boosts morale.
Email Newsletters	Summarizing weekly progress, sharing non-urgent updates, and reinforcing culture.	Weekly	Keeps everyone informed without constant interruptions.
Slack/Teams Channels	Quick questions, real-time collaboration, and informal team bonding.	Daily/As-needed	Fosters immediate connection and quick problem-solving.
"Ask Me Anything" (AMA)	Addressing tough questions directly and building trust with leadership.	Monthly	Creates a culture of psychological safety and openness.

Ultimately, a mix of these channels ensures that everyone, regardless of their role or location, feels connected and informed.

✦Bridging the Gap in a Hybrid World

Effective communication gets even trickier when you have a remote or hybrid team. You lose all those casual "water cooler" conversations, so you have to be much more deliberate about keeping people connected. Asynchronous communication is your new best friend.

This just means using tools and processes that don't demand everyone be online at the same time. Think clear project boards, detailed meeting notes that are shared immediately, and public Slack channels instead of DMs for project talk. This ensures no one is left out just because of their time zone. If you're looking for more ideas, there are some great internal communication best practices that are proven to work for distributed teams.

Transparency isn't about oversharing every little detail. It's about sharing what matters. Give your team the context they need to excel, and they’ll feel trusted, empowered, and ready to do their best work.

Making all of this seamless is key. For companies that live in Slack and Google Calendar, a tool like Be There is a lifesaver. It lets anyone create a team event right from a Slack channel, which then automatically pings a Google Calendar invite to everyone who RSVPs. It’s a very useful and handy solution that removes the friction of organizing everything from a project kickoff to an impromptu virtual coffee, making sure everyone is on the same page. It’s a small change that makes a huge difference in keeping communication clear and effortless.

Empower Your Team with Growth and Autonomy

A great company culture doesn’t come from micromanagement; it’s built by empowering your people to do their best work. This isn't about a total free-for-all, of course. It’s about building a rock-solid foundation of trust, where professional growth and employee autonomy go hand-in-hand to create a team of motivated, high-performing individuals.

When people can actually see a future for themselves at your company, they become far more invested in its present. A culture that actively pushes for learning and development sends a clear message: you see your employees as long-term partners, not just cogs in a machine. This is exactly how you attract and keep ambitious talent.

✦Cultivate Professional Development

Putting money and effort into your team's skills is one of the smartest investments you can make in your company's future. It shows you’re paying attention to their career journey and are ready to back them up.

Here's how to make that happen:

Map Out Clear Career Paths: Don't let career progression be a mystery. Sit down with your employees and actually map out what their growth could look like, whether that’s climbing the traditional ladder or deepening their expertise right where they are.
Provide Learning Budgets: Give your team a dedicated budget for courses, conferences, or even just books. This simple step empowers them to take real ownership of their development and chase what genuinely excites them.
Encourage a Mentorship Culture: It sounds simple, but pairing newer folks with seasoned veterans is incredibly powerful. It fast-tracks learning and builds stronger personal connections across the organization, weaving a tighter cultural fabric.

These kinds of initiatives signal that you see your team’s potential and are genuinely committed to helping them unlock it.

✦Champion Autonomy and Trust

The other side of the empowerment coin is autonomy. It’s really about trusting your team to manage their own work and focusing on the results they deliver, not the hours they spend glued to a desk.

True autonomy kicks in when you set clear goals and then step back, letting your people figure out the best path to get there. When employees feel trusted to own their projects from start to finish, you'll see their sense of responsibility and creativity skyrocket. This also means being open to flexible work arrangements that let people work when and where they're most productive.

A Quick Story from the Trenches: I once coached a project manager, let's call her Sarah, who was a classic command-and-control leader. She was constantly checking in on her team and dictating every single step of their process. Sure, the team was hitting deadlines, but morale was in the gutter and innovative ideas were nowhere to be found.

After we talked it through, she decided to try something different. For a major project, she set a clear end goal but left the "how" entirely up to her team. She shifted her role from taskmaster to resource. The change was astonishing. The team not only delivered the project ahead of schedule but also came up with an ingenious solution that saved the company thousands. Their engagement and productivity shot through the roof simply because they finally felt trusted.

Making that switch from control to trust is fundamental. When you give your team the freedom to excel, they will almost always exceed your expectations.

Think about this: employees at companies that prioritize their growth and trust them are three times more likely to look forward to coming to work and five times more likely to want to stay for the long haul. That’s not just a nice-to-have; it's the core of building a company culture that lasts.

Common Questions About Improving Company Culture

When you decide to really focus on improving your company's culture, a lot of practical questions pop up right away. It's one thing to have good intentions, but turning them into real, lasting change means navigating some common hurdles. Let's walk through a few of the questions I hear most often from leaders.

A big one is, "How long will this actually take?" Everyone wants to see results yesterday, but the honest answer is that culture change is a marathon, not a sprint. You might feel small shifts in morale or see a little more energy in meetings within a few months, but deep, meaningful transformation usually takes somewhere between one to three years. The key is consistency, not speed.

Then comes the measurement question: "How do we know if our culture is getting better?" You need a mix of hard data and human stories. Of course, you should track metrics like employee turnover and scores from your engagement surveys. But don't stop there. Get on the ground and talk to people through focus groups or "stay interviews" to understand the feeling and the experience behind the numbers.

✦What Role Do Tools Play in Culture Building?

So many cultural initiatives, especially team events, can end up feeling like another chore on someone's to-do list. This is a huge problem for teams that live inside tools like Slack and Google Calendar. How do you spark connection and fun without adding another layer of administrative headache to your team's day?

The secret is to find tools that slide right into the systems you already use. Don't introduce a shiny new platform that becomes a ghost town after a week. Instead, look for ways to enhance the tools your team relies on every single day. That's how you reduce friction and get people to actually use them.

A great example is a tool like Be There, which is a lifesaver for companies that run on Slack and Google Calendar. It's a very useful and handy tool because it lets anyone on the team organize an event right inside a Slack channel. When people RSVP, it automatically creates and sends a Google Calendar invite.

That simple, seamless integration removes all the little logistical hurdles that stop those spontaneous, culture-building moments from ever happening. It empowers your employees to take the lead, which is exactly the kind of grassroots engagement you want to encourage.

By making it easy for people to connect, you naturally create more opportunities for a positive culture to flourish. The right tools don't build the culture for you; they remove the barriers that stand in its way.

✦How Do We Get Leadership Buy-In?

Getting genuine commitment from the top is often the make-or-break factor. The most effective way to get your leadership team on board is to speak their language and connect culture directly to business results.

Frame the conversation around the metrics they already care about: productivity, innovation, and especially retention rates. Show them a clear plan with specific, actionable steps and what you expect the impact to be.

For a deeper dive, you can explore some of the best practices for employee engagement that draw a straight line to performance. If you're facing unique challenges, it can also be incredibly helpful to consult with experts on company culture for some tailored advice.

Ready to make team events effortless and boost your company culture? With Be There, you can create, manage, and celebrate events right from Slack, with seamless Google Calendar integration. Start your free trial today and see how easy it is to bring your team together. Learn more at https://be-there.co.