How to Build an Award-Winning Culture (That Actually Sustains Growth)

Culture isn’t a vibe. It’s not happy hours, Slack emojis, or how many wellness days you offer. It’s infrastructure—the invisible scaffolding that makes clarity possible, consistency repeatable, and people feel safe enough to do their best work.

Over the last four years, I’ve had the honor of leading an organization through four consecutive Great Place to Work recognitions—including a national Best Place to Work award. Not because we chased awards, but because we invested in systems that helped people feel connected, empowered, and trusted.

Culture Starts With Operational Integrity

You can’t scale culture if your operations are chaotic. We built transparency into every layer of the business by fully aligning the company to an adopted operating plan and measurable OKRs. Every team understood not only their responsibilities but how their objectives connected to the broader mission.

This gave people a framework to make confident decisions and collaborate across functions. Culture wasn’t a siloed initiative—it was embedded in how we planned, measured, and moved forward together.

Recognition Isn’t Reactive—It’s Rhythmic

We operationalized recognition. We created rituals that surfaced unseen work, allowed for peer-nominated wins, and helped managers reinforce values with specificity. Recognition wasn’t a quarterly bonus. It was a daily cultural feedback loop.

We also wove celebration into the everyday rhythm of work—highlighting individual and team wins in all-hands meetings, creating informal rituals for milestones, and building space into our quarterly reviews to reflect on progress, not just performance. When people felt seen for doing meaningful work, they showed up bigger the next time.

Belonging Is the Real Metric

Our survey tools measured psychological safety, trust, and clarity—not just satisfaction. And we acted on the results. We built a culture council that helped close feedback loops and represent the diversity of perspectives inside the company.

We didn’t aim for perks. We aimed for predictability and purpose—because when people understand how to succeed, and they know their work matters, you get consistency and creativity.

Culture That Grows With You

The reason we kept winning wasn’t because we stayed the same—it’s because we evolved on purpose. We scaled our rituals as we scaled our headcount. We evolved our programs as our needs changed. And we stayed in conversation with our people the whole way.

Award-winning culture isn’t magic. It’s method. And when done right, it becomes the most powerful retention, recruitment, and resilience strategy you’ll ever build.