90% of candidates research a company's culture before accepting a role – and the expectations for having a positive work environment are growing.We hosted a webinar featuring the globally renowned workplace culture leader, Michal Oshman – who over the course of her career, has held various roles heading culture and teamwork development at major social media giants like TikTok and Facebook (now Meta). She visited our London office to share her valuable insights into building a thriving workplace culture. From our discussion, we’ve picked out the top five takeaways on how to create a robust workplace culture that will ultimately lead your business to success. You can watch the full webinar here. 1. Culture happens whether you’re paying attention or not - so influence it.“Culture happens,” Michal begins. “Whether you like it or not, the moment where you have 3,4,5 people that get together regularly on Zoom…culture will happen.”The importance lies not in what you’re going to create, but how you are going to shape what’s already being built. Oftentimes, founders and CEOs talk about their big plans to build a specific type of culture in their workplace. But little do they know – the culture is already happening right under their noses. Ask yourself: “Do you want to influence it? Do you want to be thoughtful? Do you want to build it? Or do you want to just let it happen? ”But it’s not just what happens in the workplace – the active shaping of culture can be praticed at home. “I believe that company culture also happens at home. We have four children, so we're a family of six, and there's a certain, you know, culture at home, certain behaviours that are accepted or not. Certain expectations,” says Michal. “Culture happens when people get together. Question is: what are you going to do about it?”2. Show your leaders the data Anyone who’s worked with leadership in business knows numbers are everything. This is why it’s more difficult to sell abstract ideas like ‘company culture.. Telling them it’s important isn’t enough – you have to show them. “The most recent research tells us that, 20 years ago, people left companies because the job, the role, wasn't meaningful enough,” Michal explains. “Today, research shows us that people need culture.” In order to get your leaders to invest more in building your workplace culture and shaping it into one that fosters creativity, inclusion and success – you have to bring data to the table. However, we discovered only 7% of HR leaders know how to calculate the return on investment (ROI) on the wellbeing initiatives they introduce. 3. Ask your employees what they care about.Purpose in life is something people think about a lot.Yet, everyone wants to feel relevant and as if they’re having an impact at work. But Michal makes a good point that it’s often approached incorrectly: “People use the word purpose quite often,” Michal says. “But in life, you don't just have one purpose.”“Sometimes people feel that ‘if I haven't found my big capital ‘P’ Purpose, then it's not something I can write about on LinkedIn or, you know, announce on Instagram’. But purpose is something that's purposeful and meaningful for you. We often look for this reassurance that we're going in the right direction in our lives, but it's actually much more within,” she explains. “So when you hire people to companies, and that's what I really tried to do at TikTok, when you hire people within the company, it's really important that whoever they work with – their manager or their team – they have a level of curiosity about what is meaningful for you. What matters to you?”She then recalls a personal story of her ex-manager who did that:“When I joined Facebook, my manager flew down from Dublin to London and he asked me, “What do you care about?” I said without thinking, ‘being an Israeli, a mom and a Jew’ And he was like, ‘Well, I don't know much about Judaism. But tell me, what does it mean for you?’ – and it meant I told him what it meant. And you know, that made me feel seen and respected and I really hope that the same recognition and connection that I had with him that I passed it to my teams later on.Everyone has their own meaning. What does a brilliant organisation do? It aligns – This is what I get really passionate about – It aligns the company's purpose, mission, goals, and values with each of the individuals. It helps people navigate and find that connection between what matters to them, their values, their principles, to the ones of the company.” 4. Go beyond asking, and actively respect what your employees care about. Being an organisation that promotes purpose isn’t just about putting it up on the wall as one of your core values – it means actually putting it into practice.Care doesn’t have to be large and gestural. And it could look different for different employees. Whether it be small allowances for your team to be vulnerable and flexible without micromanaging them. It might mean letting an employee take a quick phone call to check in on their kids – all while giving them the reassurance that their work will still be there waiting for them afterwards. This care then becomes the foundation of trust, because companies then create spaces that invite people to be themselves.5. Recognise that every workplace has their own unique culture When coming into a new organisation, especially one that has an established foundation, you have to be conscious of the culture that already exists. What worked in one organisation may not work in the next. “When you're looking at culture, the first thing you need to be curious about is its history,” says Michal. “Its essence, who built it, who designed it, what were they thinking about, what was in their heart [...] and try to really understand that, even if it's very different to where you're coming from.”When Michal joined TikTok, she had to stop herself and put this advice into practice: “TikTok was so different to Facebook. I was at Facebook for seven years. I joined just after they IPO’d [...] and there was this sense of mission, connecting the world, making the world smaller,” she says, “And Facebook was brilliant at doing that together. A big focus was on teamwork. [...] When I joined TikTok, the culture was different. It was less about teamwork. So initially, I was like, ‘No, no, I like the way we did it there.’ But that's not going to help me build a culture.”You have to recognize that fighting an existing culture isn’t the way to do it. As a leader, you have to understand what’s worked for them specifically in the past, to give you a better understanding of how to shape it and improve it for the future. And remember: no two company histories are the same! It may be different – but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. To watch the entire webinar, check out the recording here.