3 Company Culture Strategies From SPARK HR

In an age where only 31% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, HR professionals have the heavy burden of figuring out how to create a company culture that engages employees. After all, an unhappy workforce leads to an unproductive and unsuccessful organization. Business is on the line.

However, there are 3 strategies that HR professionals can implement to create a healthy and inspiring work culture, according to presenters at SPARK HR 2025 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, this week.

Design Individualized Employee Experience Journeys

An ultimate goal and intense challenge for many HR professionals when creating a positive culture is addressing employee pain points. One strategy to address employee experience is to use journey mapping, says Karen Guzicki, VP of Advisory Services for Human Capital Institute. Journey mapping is a strategy to map out employee experience using personas to address pain points. This means that HR leaders must be active listeners of the workforce. Better insights lead to better experience, Guzicki says.

Personas, archetypes of employees, let HR leaders personalize employee journeys. HR leaders can build 4-6 personas, spotting the critical differences across staff. For example, a senior employee looking to retire with their legacy intact is not going to benefit from the same journey and experiences as a new hire who’s struggling with imposter syndrome. Journey mapping helps address individual pain points to give employees a better experience.

Guzicki does warn about building journeys from blind guessing. “Assumption kills good design,” Guzicki says. “We can’t look at it like HR,” Guzicki says. “We’ve got to look at it from the employee perspective.”

For more on journey mapping and how to use this strategy at your organization, visit HCI.org.

Incorporate a Feedback-Driven Culture

A feedback-driven culture emphasizes regular and valued feedback among all employee levels at an organization, such as next generation talent and managers.

“[The] next generation wants even more feedback from the previous generation, right? That’s what people are looking for when they’re interviewing for jobs. ‘Am I going to get the feedback I need to be successful? ‘ ” says Suellen Albahary, Director of Learning and New Program Development at Bluepoint Leadership.

Albahary also says managers often struggle with delivering feedback, not knowing how to do so effectively or they “deliver it poorly.”

To help the workforce, the key to a feedback-driven culture is to align it with business strategy.

“Where is your organization trying to go? What’s important in your organization today, and how does feedback and the feedback culture align with that?” Albahary says.

In addition to aligning feedback with organizational goals, feedback culture includes making the feedback process simple and transparent.

Use a Cultural Audit Tool

Wonder how to diagnose your organization’s culture? The third strategy is to use a cultural audit tool to understand the temperature of your company.

A cultural audit tool is a framework for thinking about how to assess your culture, how to prioritize, and where it’s misaligned, says Guzicki.

“If your culture is misaligned, you’re bleeding. Now, it’s not like you cut an artery, but it’s a consistent slow bleed that you just never seem to be able to recover. It costs you in things like low engagement. It costs you in that people are less innovative,” Guzicki says.

A cultural audit tool involves reviewing:

• Organizational values
• Leadership and role modeling
• Communication and transparency
• Inclusion and belonging
• Recognition and appreciation
• Growth and development
• Decision-making and empowerment
• Well-being and flexibility
• Accountability and performance

Spark HR 2025 is in Lake Buena Vista, April 30–May 2, 2025, where HR professionals are learning about engagement, leadership, and workplace culture from speakers at NASCAR, Microsoft, Chobani, Panasonic, LinkedIn, and more. It’s not just another conference. It’s a hands-on, interactive, and a chance to connect with people who really get it.