Since 1975, Madison has been a leading global employee recognition and incentive company. As a proud Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) company, our employee-owners are deeply committed to delivering innovative recognition programs, corporate events, and incentive travel experiences that strengthen workplace culture and drive business success.
Madison is a global leader in employee recognition and incentives, pioneering digital programs since 1995. As an employee-owned company, we deliver recognition, events, and incentive travel solutions that strengthen culture and drive results.
What Is Company Culture, and How Do You Build a Strong One?
Culture isn't perks. It's what people do, what leaders model and what gets recognized. Here's why it pays and how to build a stronger one.
Ping pong tables and free snacks used to stand in for company culture. They were never the real thing. Culture is what people do when no one is handing out perks, and it shows up in your results.
The short answer: Company culture is the shared values, behaviors and norms that shape how work actually gets done. It shows up in what leaders model, what gets recognized and how people treat each other under pressure, not in perks. A strong culture is built on purpose: define values as behaviors, model them, and recognize them consistently.
Company culture is the set of shared values, beliefs and behaviors that determines how people in an organization work together and make decisions.
Key takeaways
Culture is behavior, not perks or a values plaque.
Gallup finds business units in the top quartile for engagement are 23% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.
Culture forms whether or not you shape it, so start early.
Leaders set culture by what they model and what they recognize.
Recognition is how stated values become lived ones.
What is company culture?
Company culture is how work actually gets done in your organization: the shared values, norms and behaviors people follow, especially when no one is watching. Perks can support a culture, but they aren’t one.
A useful test: culture is what a new hire learns in their first month by watching, not by reading. It includes your values, mission, attitudes, identity and everyday behaviors. Mission statements and core values describe the culture you want. What leaders model, tolerate and reward decides the one you have.
What people often call culture
What culture actually is
A ping pong table
How people treat each other when a deadline slips
Free snacks
Whether managers notice good work and say so
An open office
Whether people can disagree openly without risk
A values plaque
Which behaviors get promoted and recognized
A happy hour
Whether new hires feel they belong by their third month
Why does company culture matter to the business?
Company culture matters because it drives engagement, and engagement shows up in the numbers. Gallup’s long-running meta-analysis compares business units in the top and bottom quartiles for engagement, and the gap is large on every outcome it measures.
In Gallup’s analysis of engagement and organizational culture, top-quartile units saw 23% higher profitability, 18% higher sales productivity and 78% less absenteeism than bottom-quartile units. Most organizations have room to grow: Gallup puts U.S. engagement at 31%, with 17% of employees actively disengaged.
Culture also keeps people. Gallup’s research on employee recognition finds that employees who don’t feel adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year, yet only one in three U.S. workers strongly agree they were recognized for good work in the past seven days. People stay where their work is seen.
When should you start building company culture?
Start now, because culture forms with or without you. Every organization has a culture from its first hire. The only choice is whether it’s shaped on purpose or by accident.
Culture also hardens over time. Habits that start small, like a manager who only notices problems or a team that never celebrates wins, become the norm. The earlier leaders define and model what they want, the less they have to undo later. For a growing company, that means before the next round of hiring. For an established one, it means next quarter, not the next reorganization.
How do you build a positive company culture?
You build a positive culture by deciding what you want people to do, showing it from the top, and recognizing it every time it happens. Six practices do most of the work.
Lead it from the top
Culture starts with leadership. People watch what leaders do far more closely than what they say, so the fastest way to shift a culture is for leaders to model the behavior first, visibly and consistently.
Define values as behaviors
“Integrity” and “teamwork” mean different things to different people. Write each value as a behavior someone could see, such as “we flag problems early, even when it’s awkward.” Without that clarity, you can’t build a culture on purpose.
Make it tangible
Put the culture in writing. A short culture playbook that explains what you believe, what you do and what you say turns abstract values into something employees can use from their first day.
Hire for values, and for culture add
Skills can be taught; values are harder to change. Hire people who share your values, but look for what they add, not only whether they fit. “Culture fit” can quietly turn into hiring people who think alike. “Culture add” asks what perspective a candidate brings that the team is missing.
Build inclusion and belonging
A culture people want to stay in is one where they feel heard, seen and safe to share ideas. That depends on inclusion: making sure every group’s contributions are noticed and valued, not only the loudest or most visible ones.
Recognize what you want repeated
Recognition is the bridge between stated values and lived ones. When leaders and peers recognize a behavior specifically and publicly, everyone learns what the organization actually values. Watch for gaps, because it’s easy to end up rewarding visible work instead of the work that matters.
What should leaders do this quarter to strengthen culture?
Pick one team, one quarter and a short list of behaviors. Here’s a plan any leadership team can run.
Write three to five values as behaviors. One sentence each, specific enough that someone could point to it happening.
Ask employees what really gets rewarded. A short pulse survey or a few listening sessions will show where stated and lived values differ.
Pick the biggest gap. Choose the one value people say isn’t lived, and focus there first.
Have every leader model it visibly. Each leader commits to one action this quarter that shows the value in practice.
Add the values to hiring. Write one interview question per value, and ask what each candidate would add to the team.
Add the values to onboarding. Culture is one of the 4 C’s of onboarding, and new hires learn it fastest in their first 90 days.
Check the signals at the end of the quarter. Re-run the pulse survey and look at where recognition is flowing and where it has gone quiet. Then pick the next gap.
How does recognition shape company culture?
Recognition is how a culture shows people what it values. Every time someone is thanked for a specific behavior, the rest of the team learns what good looks like here. Over months, those moments add up to the culture you actually have.
Madison builds recognition programs around that idea. Maestro’s social recognition makes appreciation visible across teams and locations, so good work is seen beyond one manager’s desk. Maestro’s recognition analytics show where recognition is flowing and where it has gone quiet, which is often the first sign a team’s culture is slipping. And Madison’s recognition program design consultants help leadership teams connect recognition to the values they want to see more of.
Frequently asked questions
What is company culture?
Company culture is the set of shared values, beliefs and behaviors that shapes how people work together and make decisions. It shows up in what leaders model, what gets recognized and how people treat each other under pressure. Perks like snacks or ping pong tables can support a culture, but they aren’t the culture itself.
Why is company culture important?
Culture drives engagement, and engagement drives results. Gallup’s meta-analysis found business units in the top quartile for engagement have 23% higher profitability and 78% less absenteeism than those in the bottom quartile. A strong culture also helps retention, because people stay where their work is noticed.
What’s the difference between culture fit and culture add?
Culture fit asks whether a candidate matches how the team already works. Culture add asks what a candidate brings that the team is missing. Hiring for shared values matters either way, but culture add avoids building a team of people who all think alike, which can limit ideas and inclusion.
How do you measure company culture?
Combine what people say with what they do. Pulse surveys show how employees experience the culture. Behavioral signals, like how often people recognize each other, which teams have gone quiet and turnover by team, show whether values are being lived. Review both every quarter and act on the biggest gap.
