Office culture isn’t something that magically appears in a company handbook. Jo Campbell, Chief Operating Officer at Verve, explains why everyone has a role to play in shaping the environment they work in and how small actions can make a big difference.
We hear a lot these days about ‘office culture’ and how it drives more recruitment decisions than ever. I’ve recently just been hiring for new administrators and every single one of them asked us about our culture and rightly so.
Whether you work remotely, in the office 100% of the time, or have a hybrid offering, you spend a lot of time embroiled in work and it’s important that that place aligns with your own ethos and is a culture fit for you.
Ask most people what shapes their office culture and they’ll shrug and say “management” or “the CEO’s vibe” or, more cynically, “whoever complained loudest last.”
There’s truth in all of that. But culture is a much messier, more layered thing than one person’s leadership style, and understanding what actually builds it is the first step to actually changing it.
Therefore, as employees, often the culture is something that you feel you have no control over. Something that happens to us, decided somewhere above our pay grade, usually announced via a slightly awkward all staff email with a stock photo of people high fiving in a boardroom.
But here’s the thing, culture isn’t just handed down from the top. It’s built, brick by brick, by the people doing the graft.
Verve wins awards annually for their culture and employee wellbeing but I can tell you, these things do not come by accident and they’re not something that is driven by one person, one department and certainly doesn’t come with stock photos. It’s a constant work in progress from everyone.
I thought I’d take a moment to share with you some ways in that you can impact and help to build a culture that works for you and your team, and your business.
Yes, leadership sets the tone. Values on the wall, mission statements, all of that. But values on a poster mean nothing if the day-to-day reality in the office (or on Teams, let’s be honest) doesn’t match up.
And that day-to-day reality is shaped hugely by paraplanners and administrators, because you’re the ones actually living in it.
So what can you do, practically, without waiting for someone more senior to give you permission? Lets look first at how culture is grown, and then how you can influence it.
History and habit
Every workplace has a sort of institutional memory, the “we’ve always done it this way” energy that lingers long after the people who started it have left.
Sometimes that’s brilliant, sometimes it’s a fossilised process nobody’s brave enough to question. Culture is partly just accumulated habit, repeated until it becomes invisible.
Leadership behaviour, not leadership words
(note, Leaders does not mean management) Here’s the gap that catches most firms out. A leader can say “we value work-life balance” in every single town hall, but if they’re sending emails at 11pm and expecting replies, that’s the actual culture.
People don’t listen to what you say, they watch what you do and copy it. Behaviour is contagious, values statements are not.
Systems and structure
How work actually flows matters more than people give it credit for. Do people have realistic workloads? Is there a fair way to raise concerns? Is progression clear or does it feel like a mystery box? A lot of “bad culture” is really just bad systems dressed up as a personality problem.
Who gets rewarded, and for what
If the person who stays latest and never says no gets promoted, that teaches everyone something, whether it’s true or not. Culture is shaped enormously by what gets praised, what gets ignored, and what gets quietly punished.
The small, unofficial rituals
The Friday check in, the birthday cake, the way someone always makes tea when someone else is having a hard day.
These feel trivial but they’re often the actual glue. Culture lives more in these tiny repeated moments than in any strategy document.
So how do you actually shape it, rather than just observing it happening to you?
Notice the gap between stated values and lived behaviour and name it constructively. Ask the awkward questions.
Not as a gotcha, just as useful information. “We say we value flexibility but everyone feels guilty leaving on time, why is that?” is a genuinely useful question to ask out loud.
If a process feels clunky or an office event gives you the ick, say so. It doesn’t have to be negative (always be an Optimist Prime not a Negatron) and should always come with a suggestion on how to change or improve, otherwise it’s just a moan and a problem and that solves nothing.
Nobody improves a culture by staying quiet and seething internally. Trust me, it doesn’t work, it just gives you a headache and frown lines even the best Botox can’t fix.
Protect the good rituals and quietly retire the bad ones
If a meeting has become pointless, say so. If a tradition brings people together, keep doing it even when things get busy, especially when things get busy.
Managers can’t fix what they don’t know about. If a workload is unmanageable, the office situation is making you feel a certain way or a process is causing genuine stress, that’s useful information, not a complaint to be filed away and ignored.
Most decent managers want to know. The ones who don’t want to know are a different article entirely and this is already getting long.
Be consistent, publicly and lead by example
If you say you value something, act on it visibly and often, not just when it’s convenient. Consistency is what turns a nice idea into an actual norm.
Want less last minute panic and more planning? Be organised yourself and don’t be precious about helping others get there too.
Be nice, and kind and expect it back. Remember that scene in Finding Nemo, where all the fish pull together to escape from the net?
That’s it, that’s what culture is, getting everyone together to make the (working) world a better place, (but with more fish or something, I don’t know).
Want people to be more sociable? arrange an informal night out or a lunch together. We have theatre and book clubs at Verve that are nothing to do with Verve, just subsects of amazing people getting together to do what they want to do.
Push for better systems, not just better vibes
A workload review or a clearer escalation process will do more for culture long term than any team building day ever will, sorry to the pro-team builders out there (I do love me an escape room).
Culture isn’t handed down fully formed from on high, and it isn’t purely grassroots either.
It’s history, behaviour, structure, incentives and small daily rituals, all stacked on top of each other, shifting slightly every single day based on what everyone in the building does and doesn’t do.
Which means, genuinely, everyone has a hand on the wheel. Some hands are just bigger than others.
Share the load, and the credit
If you’ve found a shortcut, a template that works brilliantly, or a way of structuring a report that saves half an hour, tell your team.
Culture improves the moment people stop hoarding useful knowledge like it’s a competitive advantage. It isn’t. Sharing’s caring, and if we can all do work easier, we’re all happier.
Finished a tricky case? Got through a mountain of DB transfer research? Say so, out loud, to your colleagues. A supportive environment isn’t built by one big gesture from management once a year, it’s built by lots of tiny ones from each other, constantly.
Give kudos where it’s due and on a personal level, a small compliment goes a long way. Tell someone you like their hair, or their shoes or the way they’ve really wrangled that spreadsheet.
You’ve heard the term, ‘happy wife, happy life’, well it’s misogynist and I hate it, but ‘happy colleague, less work fatigue*’ I can get on with! (*copyright, me. Just now).
Support new starters properly
We all remember what it felt like to be the new person, terrified of asking a “silly” question and slowly realising there’s no such thing.
Be the colleague who makes someone feel welcome rather than the one who sighs when they ask where the stationery cupboard is.
None of this requires a title change or a seat on the board. Culture is genuinely just the accumulation of small daily choices, made by ordinary people, repeated often enough that they become the norm.
Paraplanners and administrators are often closer to the actual client outcomes and the actual workload than anyone in senior management, which means you have more influence over the day to day atmosphere than you might think.
So next time someone says they don’t like the culture, ask them (and yourself) what should we all do about it.
Main image: hannah-busing-Zyx1bK9mqmA-unsplash
