Ask ten people what “workplace culture” actually means and you’ll get ten different answers, the free snacks, the Friday drinks, the mission statement on the wall. But when we polled people about what actually shapes how they feel at work, the answer was pretty blunt: 60% said it comes down to how the people at the top behave.
Not perks. Not policies. Behaviour.
If you’ve ever worked somewhere that felt “off” and couldn’t quite explain why, this is probably why. Culture isn’t the words in the handbook, it’s what happens when the founder is having a bad day, or how a manager reacts the first time someone makes a mistake.
It Starts at the Top (Whether Leaders Like It or Not)
Here’s the uncomfortable truth for anyone in a leadership seat: your team is watching everything. Not just what you say in the all-hands meeting, but whether you actually follow through, whether you admit when you’re wrong, whether you make people feel safe enough to disagree with you.
In creative and marketing teams especially, this matters more than most industries. Good creative work needs people to take risks, pitch weird ideas, and occasionally fail in front of each other. That only happens when leadership has built enough trust that people aren’t scared of looking stupid.
Signs the leadership culture is healthy:
- People push back on ideas in meetings without tension in the room afterward
- Feedback flows both ways, not just downward
- Leaders admit mistakes out loud, not just in private
- Decisions get explained, not just announced
Signs it’s not:
- People saving their real opinions for the Slack DMs
- A sense that bad news doesn’t travel upward
- Leaders who talk about “open doors” but are never actually approachable
If you’re a leader reading this and recognising some of the second list, the fix usually isn’t a new initiative. It’s smaller and harder than that: consistently doing what you say you’ll do, and making it genuinely safe to disagree with you.
The Colleague Effect
27% of people pointed to day-to-day peer relationships as the thing that shapes their experience of work. Which makes sense, you might see your manager for an hour a week, but you’re sitting next to (or Zooming with) your teammates all day, every day.
This is the stuff that doesn’t show up in engagement surveys but absolutely determines whether someone dreads Monday or doesn’t. Does your team actually help each other, or is it quietly competitive? Do people celebrate each other’s wins, or is there an undercurrent of comparison?
A few things that genuinely move the needle here, without needing a big culture budget:
- Protecting time for informal connection, not mandatory fun, just space for it to happen naturally
- Making sure credit gets shared properly (nothing erodes trust faster than someone else taking credit for your idea)
- Actively including people in conversations, especially newer or quieter team members
- Normalising asking for help instead of treating it as a weakness
Rewards and Policies: The Quiet 7%
Only 7% of people ranked rewards and policies as central to culture, and honestly, that tracks. Policies are the scaffolding that either supports the culture you say you have, or quietly contradicts it.
If your company talks about work-life balance but nobody actually takes their annual leave, that’s a policy-culture gap. If you say you value initiative but the promotion process only rewards tenure, same thing. These gaps are where cynicism creeps in, people notice when the stated values and the lived experience don’t match.
The Industry Factor
Worth saying clearly: culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A new five-person startup in Melbourne’s creative scene is going to feel completely different to an established agency in Sydney’s CBD and that’s not necessarily a problem. The issue isn’t which culture is “better,” it’s whether the culture matches what you personally need to do good work.
Some people thrive on the chaos and speed of a startup. Others do their best work with more structure and predictability. Neither is wrong, but ending up in the wrong environment for your working style is a fast track to burnout, even if the company itself is perfectly fine.
How to Actually Spot Good Culture (Before You’re Stuck In It)
Culture is hard to see from the outside, but not impossible. A few things worth trying in an interview:
- Ask what happened the last time something went wrong. Not hypothetically, a real example. How leadership responded to an actual mistake tells you more than any values statement.
- Ask to speak to someone who isn’t your prospective manager. Culture looks different from different levels of the org chart.
- Notice how people talk about each other, not just about the company. Warmth (or its absence) is hard to fake in casual conversation.
- Pay attention to your own gut reaction in the interview room. If something feels slightly performative, it usually is.
If You’re Trying to Fix a Culture That’s Not Working
For leaders sitting with this and thinking “okay, but what do I actually do“:
- Start by asking, not announcing. Before rolling out a culture initiative, ask your team what’s actually bothering them. The answer is often smaller and more specific than expected.
- Fix the visible inconsistencies first. If a policy contradicts a value, that’s the fastest trust-killer and often the easiest thing to correct.
- Model the behaviour you want, publicly. If you want people to admit mistakes, admit one first.
- Give it time. Culture shifts are slow and unglamorous. Distrust built over years doesn’t dissolve after one workshop.
At Artisan, we spend a lot of time in conversations exactly like this one, with creative, digital and marketing professionals trying to figure out if a workplace is genuinely the right fit, and with employers trying to build a culture worth staying for. If either of those sounds like where you’re at, we’re happy to talk it through.
