5 Ways to Know If Your Workplace Culture Is Moving South
There’s no denying how difficult it is to establish a positive, rich workplace culture.
And in today’s working world, a strong culture is essential. It’s what helps employees feel safe, valued, and like they belong. Culture isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of deal either; it’s more of a living system shaped by people, policies, power dynamics, leadership initiatives, and a willingness to keep growing, changing, and learning. While you may have kicked things off with a clear vision and strong values that met your team’s needs, even the best-intentioned cultural and inclusivity initiatives can flatline without a little TLC.
But how do you know when things are starting to slide? What are the red flags, and how can you spot what’s missing before disengagement takes hold?
Today we’re exploring the signs your culture has stalled, including:
Plus, we’ve got a brand new tool to get you started.
🚩Flag #1: Your Engagement Scores Have Plateaued (or Dropped)
…and you aren’t sure why.
You’re doing the right things: sending out anonymized surveys regularly, tracking scores over time, taking in any feedback and perhaps even trying to implement it. But instead of improvement, things feel stuck. Or worse, they’re slipping backwards.
There are a lot of reasons that can happen, and many of them might have simply crept back in without you even realizing, such as:
Busy periods and Low Bandwidth=no time for change: When it comes to all-hands-on-deck kinds of deadlines, the “culture and inclusivity stuff” tends to get pushed to the backburner.
Leadership Changes = New Priorities: New CEO? Or maybe new team leads? That transitional period of learning and changing tends to be a petri dish of inconsistency as you develop new patterns and roadmaps towards growth.
Initiative Fatigue: You might have rolled out a lot of awesome stuff early, from training to committees to surveys, but now folks are burnt out and disengaged. It happens, and it’s normal—that doesn’t make it any easier to navigate, unfortunately.
Policies Haven’t Kept Up with Promises: You’ve got inclusive language built into your official values, however in practice this hasn’t caught up. That might mean PTO, promotions, or conflict resolution processes have not caught up. Unfortunately that kind of dissonance erodes trust and causes resentment.
💬 What this tells you: If engagement is dipping despite your best efforts, your team might be feeling stuck, disconnected, or unsure what’s actually changing. It’s not a failure, it’s a sign that things need to shift.
🧭 Culture Quick Tip: Sometimes, what looks like stagnation is actually a sign that your organization has outgrown its current tools. To move beyond a standstill, it’s important to try new methods. This could mean:
Need for new training initiatives
Work with your HR or inclusivity team to learn what on-the-ground work needs to be done to repair trust.
Enlist an outside consultant to take a high-level look at what can be done for your team today.
🚩Flag #2: Policies Haven’t Translated into Action
Many organizations proudly list their inclusivity-related values, such as: respect, integrity, collaboration, and empathy. They might even host Lunch and Learns or work to create Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to help marginalized team members find like-minded, safe spaces.
However, in practice it’s a different story: Ask employees and you might discover that despite internal changes to policies and procedures on paper, actions taken to work towards measurable outcomes of inclusivity have stalled, handled poorly, or haven’t been implemented at all.
Employees inevitably become exhausted by inclusivity work that does not lead to action and feedback.
💬 What this tells you: When values aren’t consistently applied or enforced, they lose their meaning. A culture stall often shows up in the disconnect between ideals and day-to-day reality.
🧭 Culture Quick Tip: It’s important to evaluate your values to understand if they are aspirational, integrated, embedded into policies and leadership, or simply ignored. Better yet? Get your employees to evaluate your efforts via a survey.
🚩 Flag #3: Inclusivity Is Still “Extra”
In a similar vein, maybe you have a robust inclusivity committee and ERGs. Maybe some training here and there, and the occasional awareness post is shared with the team and liked.
But there’s one problem: it still feels like something separate from everyday work.
It still feels optional.
When inclusivity isn’t embedded into your workplace culture, decision-making structures, team dynamics, leadership development, metrics, and more, it tends to get pushed aside, especially as busy seasons come and go.
It makes sense; new efforts don’t integrate themselves. And if inclusion isn’t intentionally built into core systems, it tends to stagnate.
💬 What this tells you: Inclusivity is a “nice to have”, not a core function. Culture stalls when inclusion isn’t wired into how your organization operates.
🧭 Culture Quick Tip: Start treating inclusivity like it’s a necessary building block within your organization. Instead of one-off trainings or monthly shoutouts, look for ways to build inclusion into everyday systems. That means onboarding, performance reviews, team meetings, KPIs, leadership discussions, and more.
The more embedded inclusivity is, the less “extra” it feels, and the harder it is to ignore and dismiss.
🚩Flag #4: Not Enough Buy-in
Want to know where your culture stands? CultureAlly’s new Cultural Compass is your go-to to learn where you’re at in your inclusive journey.
Keep scrolling to learn more.
You’ve done the workshops and sent the emails, maybe even launched a cultural initiative or two. But for whatever reason, it’s just not sticking. Leadership is nodding along, but they aren’t reinforcing inclusivity. In turn, employees are showing up, but not showing interest.
Sounds familiar? A lack of buy-in is one of the fastest ways to stall cultural momentum. Sometimes it shows up visibly, other times it can subtle: New initiatives are ignored before they even begin because folks assume, perhaps correctly, that nothing is going to change.
💬 What this tells you: Establishing an inclusive workplace culture requires both top-down leadership and grassroots engagement. Without enthusiastic support from decision-makers and staff, initiatives often feel performative and hollow, and allow cynicism to creep in.
🧭 Culture Quick Tip: Buy-in isn’t just about enthusiasm; it’s about alignment. It means helping the right people connect with leadership, champion inclusivity efforts, and set clear, measurable goals for progress.
🚩Flag #5: Wins Aren’t Celebrated
If your team is crushing it and it goes unacknowledged and/or unappreciated (or if necessary feedback seems to disappear into a black hole), you’ve got a gap in recognition and transparency amongst staff.
Not only is that demoralizing, it’s disheartening. It reinforces the idea that cultural shifts and inclusivity have simply been “tacked on” to your workplace initiatives rather than becoming an inherent part of the day-to-day operations.
That doesn’t mean giving constant praise. Simply put, people want to know their work matters and their voices are heard.
💬 What this tells you: When feedback loops break down, trust erodes. And without trust, culture can’t move forward.
🧭 Culture Compass Tip: One hallmark of a mature organizational culture is clear, responsive feedback systems. They don’t have to be complicated, they just have to be consistent.
So…How Do You Improve Workplace Culture?
Overall, there are a lot of ways culture can become stagnant, and the reasons are often complicated and require assistance from experts and individuals who have a deep understanding of navigating inclusive culture.
Your Culture North Star Starts Here
Culture drift is real. But figuring out where you stand shouldn’t be a guessing game.
That’s why we built the Culture Compass, a 5-minute check-in to help you understand your workplace’s current culture stage and how to move forward with clarity.
Here’s what you’ll walk away with:
🔎 A Custom Culture Profile
Find out whether you’re a Foundation Builder, a Momentum Maker, or an Inclusion Champion and what that means for your team’s next steps.
📚 Tailored Resources That Actually Help
You’ll get specific recommendations based on your results. Plus, curated articles, tools, and action items you can put to use immediately.
🎁 A Bonus Gift Just for You
Unlock an exclusive discount on CultureAlly services. Because taking action should be as easy as taking the quiz.
