Only 16% of Australian workers were fully engaged in 2025, according to ADP’s People at Work research. That figure had fallen two percentage points since 2023, placing Australia in the lower third of markets globally.
Culture is often discussed in the language of values, perks and purpose statements. Employees, however, experience it more practically. It’s whether managers keep promises, decisions feel fair and speaking up changes anything. When only one in six people is fully engaged, the gap between what organisations say about culture and what employees live is hard to ignore.
It’s worth getting pretty precise about what company culture actually is, and what great workplaces do differently.
What is workplace culture, by definition?
Workplace culture is the shared set of values, behaviours and unwritten rules that shape how work gets done in any organisation. It lives in the small stuff: who gets promoted, what happens when someone misses a deadline, whether people speak up in the meeting or save their honest opinion for the group chat afterwards.
A useful test: culture is whatever your newest hire learns in their first fortnight without anyone explicitly teaching them.
What does great workplace culture look like in practice?
Great workplace culture is built into the way the organisation hires, communicates, recognises contribution, develops managers and makes decisions. Employees know what is expected of them, but they also know what they can expect in return.
Listening is a practical part of this. Strong organisations ask employees what is working, where work gets harder than it needs to be and whether leaders are living the organisation’s stated values. Then they act on what they hear. People don’t expect every suggestion to become a policy, but they do expect their feedback to be taken seriously.
A great culture also holds up when work is difficult. It’s easy to be generous when budgets are healthy and workloads are manageable. Trust is tested during a restructure, a service failure, a rushed deadline or an unpopular decision. Employees watch whether leaders communicate clearly, share the burden and treat people with respect when the pressure is on.
The 5 elements of great company culture
There are five elements of a strong workplace culture: credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. They are held together by trust, which is built through what people experience from leaders, managers and colleagues each day.
Credibility
Credibility shows up in leaders that are competent, who communicate honestly and follow through on what they say. Employees are far more likely to trust a leadership team when they understand why decisions are being made, including the difficult ones.
It shows up in the basics. Leaders share information early rather than letting rumours do the work. Managers explain how team priorities connect to business goals. Commitments made in a town hall, team meeting or performance conversation are met, or openly revisited when circumstances change.
At the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For, 83% of employees say management’s actions match its words, compared with 42% at a typical workplace. That gap comes from consistency between what leaders promise and what employees see happen.
Respect
Respect means treating employees as capable adults whose time, contribution and life outside work have value. It includes providing the resources, information and support people need to do good work, rather than asking them to compensate for broken processes through goodwill and overtime.
In practice, respect can mean reasonable workloads, useful development opportunities, flexible arrangements where roles allow, and recognition that is specific and timely. It also means managers paying attention when someone says a deadline is unrealistic or a process is making work harder than it needs to be.
A respectful workplace does not lower standards, it creates the conditions in which people can meet high standards without burning out or feeling disposable.
Fairness
Fairness is employees’ sense that people are treated equitably, regardless of who they know, where they sit in the organisation or how closely they resemble the people making decisions. It’s tested most sharply in decisions about pay, promotion, performance management, access to opportunities and flexibility.
Employees should rightfully expect the process to be clear, consistent and based on relevant evidence. A promotion decision can still disappoint someone without damaging trust, provided the criteria are understood and feedback is honest.
Favouritism has a long memory. When people believe advancement depends on proximity to power rather than contribution, they stop seeing a future for themselves at the organisation.
Pride
Pride is the feeling that your work has meaning, that your team achieves good things and that your organisation deserves its reputation. It’s the difference between listing an employer on LinkedIn and being happy to tell a friend, family member or future colleague where you work.
People feel pride when they can see the value of their contribution and connect it to a broader purpose. For some, that may be helping customers, patients, students or communities. For others, it may be building a strong product, solving a difficult problem or being part of a team that delivers work they respect.
Companies can’t manufacture pride, they can only earn it by giving people meaningful work, recognising effort and acting in ways employees can stand behind.
Camaraderie
Camaraderie is the sense that people can work well together, be themselves and find support when work gets difficult. It is not about forcing friendship or turning every team into a social club. It is about creating an environment where colleagues cooperate, share credit and treat one another with basic decency.
In a strong culture, people ask for help before a problem becomes a crisis. New starters are brought into the group rather than left to work out informal rules alone. Teams can disagree without making disagreement personal.
Camaraderie matters most when pressure rises. A team that has built trust before a busy period, restructure or service issue is better placed to handle the work without turning on one another.
How do you start building a good workplace culture?
Start with evidence. Thirty years of Great Place To Work research has shown us that senior leaders often experience their workplace differently from frontline employees, new hires, people managers or employees working across locations. A culture assessment or confidential employee survey helps identify where those experiences diverge.
Look beyond the overall score. Break results down by team, tenure, work arrangement and relevant demographic groups where privacy and sample sizes allow. The goal is to find the moments where trust is strongest, where it breaks down and which employee groups are carrying the cost.
Then choose one or two problems that employees can see you fixing. It may be an unclear promotion process, inconsistent manager communication, poor recognition practices or an approval process that wastes hours each week. Focus matters. A visible improvement in a real pain point will do more for trust than a large culture program that employees experience as another layer of corporate language.
Give the work an owner, a timeline and a clear measure of progress. If the issue is career development, for example, employees should be able to see what has changed with clearer criteria, better manager training, published opportunities or more useful feedback conversations.
Finally, close the loop. Tell employees what you heard, what you plan to change, what will take longer and what you are not changing. They do not need leaders to agree with every piece of feedback. They need proof that speaking honestly leads to a considered response.
Culture improves when employees see a direct line between their voice and the organisation’s actions.
How to use employee engagement surveys to build good workplace culture
The Trust Index is Great Place To Work’s employee survey. It asks people about trust, pride and camaraderie at work, and answers are collected confidentially so people can respond honestly. That confidentiality matters because it’s very rare for an employee to tell their employer the culture is broken with their name attached.
Used properly, the results give you a baseline, a benchmark against Australia’s Best Workplaces, and a short list of what to fix first. Score well enough and you qualify for Great Place To Work Certification, which turns your culture into evidence a candidate can check before accepting an offer.
Re-survey every year to track change and uncover trends. Culture drifts, and last year’s fix could easily become this year’s blind spot.
Frequently asked questions
What is workplace culture?
Workplace culture is how things really work at a company: the shared values, habits and unwritten rules that shape daily behaviour. It covers how decisions get made, how people treat each other, and what gets rewarded or ignored. Culture exists whether or not anyone manages it. The version on the careers page and the version employees experience can be very different, which is why measuring it matters more than describing it.
What are the 5 elements of a great company culture?
Great Place To Work research identifies five elements: credibility (leaders do what they say), respect (employees get trust and flexibility), fairness (opportunity follows contribution), pride (people value their work and employer) and camaraderie (colleagues enjoy working together). All five rest on trust between employees and management. Companies that score highly across these elements retain more people and consistently outperform on measures from innovation to shareholder returns.
How can I improve workplace culture in my team?
Start by asking your team what’s working and what isn’t, ideally through a confidential survey so answers are honest. Pick one or two fixable problems, fix them where everyone can see, and report back on what you changed. Consistency beats scale: a manager who runs fair meetings and keeps promises does more for workplace culture than any values workshop. Re-measure after six months to check the change stuck.
What is the Trust Index survey?
The Trust Index is Great Place To Work’s employee survey, used by organisations in Australia and around the world. It asks employees how much they trust leaders, take pride in their work and enjoy their colleagues, with responses collected confidentially. Results benchmark your workplace culture against Australia’s Best Workplaces and underpin Great Place To Work Certification, the recognition employers use as public proof of a great employee experience.
