Organisational culture assessment
An honest look at how your organisation's culture works, day to day - what’s worth protecting, and what could change to help you get where you want to go.
An organisational culture assessment helps you uncover what’s helping your organisation get where it wants to go, and what might be getting in the way. If you’re still working out where that is, it gives you a clear place to start.
We help you explore your culture through three lenses: the principles people use to make decisions, the shared practices in how teams work together, and the environment around them.
In each, we help you understand what’s making your culture strong, so you can build on it. And we highlight places where things pull against each other - where the expectation and lived reality don’t quite match up. You come away with a clear picture people across the organisation can stand behind, and a sense of what matters most.
When a culture assessment might help
A culture assessment can be useful at lots of different moments. Here are a few we often come across.
The situation | How a culture review might help |
|---|---|
You have a new strategy or direction | Shows which parts of your culture will help carry it, and where the way things work today might pull the other way. |
You’re still working out where to go next | Gives you a clear sense of where you’re starting from, and what you have to build on. |
Two organisations or teams are coming together | Helps you see what each side does well and wants to keep, and where their ways of working differ, so you can plan for it early. |
You’re new in post | Gives you a fair, rounded picture of what you’ve joined - the strengths to build on, and what people would like to change. |
Things feel a bit tired, or practice has drifted | Helps put words to what’s changed, and finds the energy that’s still there to build on. |
The engagement scores are telling you something | Looks behind the numbers at what’s driving them, through people’s own stories. Read the culture assessment in a professional membership body. |
You’ve set new values, or you’re refreshing them | Shows how far they already guide day-to-day work, and what might help them become part of how people work. |
You’d like an independent view | Brings an outside eye to how things work, with findings people across the organisation can trust because they helped shape them. |
What a culture assessment might look at
Every organisation has a picture of how it works - the principles people are expected to use, how teams are meant to work together, what it says it rewards. A culture assessment looks at how that picture compares with everyday life. Over the years we’ve found a few questions handy for assessing culture, because each one shows a different side of how an organisation works. Each can turn up a strength just as easily as a gap.
For example, take a principle like we put the people we serve first. We might ask:
- Do decisions reflect it, even in a busy week?
- If they don’t, would someone feel able to say so?
- When things fall short of it, does the organisation learn from it?
- Does it still count when following it is costly?
- Do the people who hold to it get noticed?
Each question can give a different answer, and that’s often where the useful conversations begin. Below are the angles behind them. We’d choose and shape them with you, depending on what you want to understand.
Integrity
How closely what people do matches what the organisation says it stands for. Where it’s strong, people tend to trust the principles, because they’ve seen them used. Where there’s a gap, it’s often down to drift - small shortcuts that add up - rather than anyone deciding to ignore them.
One way to explore it is through real moments, like a budget decision, or a time a shortcut was taken or turned down. Reading each against the principle it tests can show where words and actions match, and where they’ve drifted apart.
Safety
Whether people feel able to speak up when something doesn’t match - a principle being bent, or a practice that isn’t working. It’s often how an organisation spots drift early.
Amy Edmondson’s psychological safety questions can be a useful tool here, especially when the results are read team by team rather than as one average. Safety is rarely the same everywhere, and the teams where it’s strong can teach as much as the ones where people tend to hold back.
Learning
What happens after something goes wrong. Does the organisation look at what happened and adjust, or does the moment pass with someone taking the blame? How mistakes are handled can say a lot about what an organisation values.
Tracing a few recent examples, like a missed target or a complaint, can show where mistakes turn into improvements, and where a bit more curiosity might help.
Respect
How seriously the organisation takes its own principles when following them costs something. Most principles are easy to keep when things are going well. Respect is about whether they still get a say when they’re inconvenient - when they slow a decision down, or rule out an easier option.
It can help to look back at a few recent decisions where a principle was at stake, and ask whether anyone brought it up. Where people raise principles even when it’s awkward, there’s usually something strong to build on.
Recognition
What gets noticed. Do the right things get seen and thanked, or mainly the visible ones? Praise and promotion leave a clear record, so this can be one of the more straightforward angles to explore.
Looking at who’s been celebrated lately, and what for, shows whether it matches your principles. Where it does, you have something to point to. Where it doesn’t, it can be a practical place to start.
A culture review might focus on one or two of these, or add something that isn’t here. It depends on what you want to understand.
Where these angles come from
Workplace culture can feel hard to pin down. Principles, practices and environment are the parts you can see and work on - how decisions get made, how the work gets done, what gets rewarded, what an ordinary Tuesday feels like.
These angles are ones we’ve found useful for seeing whether those parts hold up, built up over many pieces of work. They’re a starting point rather than a fixed set, and we’d happily shape them around your organisation.
If you’d like to explore your culture on your own first, Schein’s culture model and the Cultural Web are good places to start.
Our approach to an organisational culture assessment
A culture assessment is designed to uncover the lived reality of your culture - how things happen day to day - and set it alongside how things are meant to work. A few different methods help with this, and each one sees something the others miss. We’d agree the mix with you, based on your size, how spread out your teams are and what you most want to understand.
However we do it, we always aim to hear from a real cross-section of people, check each finding against more than one source, and look as carefully for what’s working as for what’s getting in the way.
Understanding how your culture is meant to work
The first step is usually to understand the stated reality - how the organisation describes itself, and how things are meant to happen. Strategy documents, values, policies, promotion criteria and the papers that go to leadership meetings all help with this. They give everything else something to compare against, and help us ask better questions later on.
Hearing how everyone experiences your culture
A staff survey is the simplest way to give everyone a voice, and to see how views differ across the organisation. We’d usually build one around the angles you’ve chosen, mixing well-tested questions, like Edmondson’s psychological safety scale, with a few written for your organisation. Looking at the results by team, level, location or length of service often says more than the overall score.
Understanding what really happens
Conversations get to the stories behind the numbers - how decisions get made, and what people do when things get difficult. We’d talk with people one to one and in small groups, from across different teams and levels. Rather than asking them to rate abstract ideas, we’d usually ask about real, recent situations: what happened, and who was involved. This is known as the critical incident technique, and it tends to give a truer picture than opinions alone. We’d then work through the notes systematically, grouping what we hear into themes, so the picture rests on patterns rather than on the most memorable story.
Seeing your culture in everyday work
Sometimes it helps to see the work first-hand - a team meeting, say, or a handover between teams. It isn’t always needed, but it can be useful when what people describe and what the documents say don’t quite agree.
Spotting what’s already working
In most organisations, people are already doing good things together - teams that connect well, or habits that help everyone pull the same way. Often these grow up quietly, and nobody has written them down. A culture review is a good chance to find them.
One way is to look for the teams or moments where things go noticeably well, and ask what’s different there. This is sometimes called positive deviance: learning from the people inside your organisation who’ve already found a way that works. Once these practices are found, they can be named and written down, so they become something people can point to and build on - and other teams can take them up in their own way.
Finding what’s worth keeping
Change can feel like a risk to the things people value most. Asking about them directly, right across the organisation, means they’re part of the picture from the start. Two simple questions help. What’s good here that you wouldn’t want to lose? And what’s one thing you’d change tomorrow if you could? The answers mean that whatever comes next builds on what people already value.
Building a shared picture of your organisational culture
The aim here is a picture people across the organisation recognise as true. We bring the sources together and look at where they agree, and where they point in different directions. Where two things are both true and pulling against each other, we keep both in view rather than smoothing them over. Before anything is final, we’d test the early findings with a group from across the organisation.
A lighter culture review might be a read of the key documents and a round of conversations, with a short survey if it helps. A deeper one might add time watching how work runs, and more than one round of testing the findings.
The thinking behind it
Each method has blind spots. A survey tells you how people feel, but not why. Conversations reach the why, but only from the people you speak to. Documents show what’s intended rather than what happens. Used together, they check each other - researchers call this triangulation.
We look at the spread as well as the average, because two organisations with the same overall score can be very different places to work. And we test findings with people before they’re final, because a picture people recognise is much easier to act on.
What you come away with
A culture assessment usually ends with a working session, where we talk through what we found together. There’s time to question it, add to it and agree what matters most.
What you take away tends to include:
- What’s making your culture strong - across your principles, practices and environment, often in people’s own words.
- The principles people already use, written down - sometimes for the first time.
- Good practice worth sharing - things some teams are already doing well that others could take up.
- Where things pull against each other, and why - the places where what’s expected and what happens day to day don’t quite match.
- A sense of what matters most - the few changes that would help most.
Some of the most useful findings come in pairs: two things that are both true, even though they seem to contradict each other. “We want people to take ownership” might sit alongside “people don’t feel they have the authority to.” Holding both at once is sometimes called dialectical thinking, and it’s an important part of how we work. People in different teams and roles can experience the same organisation quite differently, and each view is usually right from where they stand. Bringing those pairs into the open helps people understand each other’s experience, and shows where things could get better.
From there, it’s your call. Sometimes the picture is enough, and you carry it forward yourselves. Sometimes it helps to have us alongside - designing changes with your people, supporting them as they take hold, or helping you keep things moving over time. And if what you need turns out to be lighter than you expected, we’ll say so.
A one-off assessment, or a regular read
A culture assessment looks closely at your culture as it is now. If you’d find it useful to keep an eye on the whole organisation over time, with culture as one of eight areas, that’s what States of Vitality is for - our organisational health tool. One gives you depth now, and the other shows how things change over time. They can work well together.
Common questions
Is a culture assessment the same as a culture review or a culture audit?
A culture assessment and a culture review are two names for the same kind of work, and we use both. A culture audit is usually a little different - it tends to check a culture against a set standard, often for compliance. An organisational culture assessment starts from what’s already working, and looks at what’s helping and what’s getting in the way, so you can decide what to build on.
How is this different from an engagement survey?
An engagement survey is a useful measure of how people feel. A culture assessment goes alongside it to explore why - through conversations, real examples, and how day-to-day reality compares with what’s expected. If you already run an engagement survey, its results can be a helpful starting point.
Who would be involved?
Usually a real cross-section. The survey can go to everyone, and conversations include people from different teams and levels, leaders among them. Seeing how views differ between groups is often one of the most helpful parts of a culture review.
Can you assess our culture if we don’t have defined values?
Yes, and it can be a good place to start. Every organisation has principles people already use, whether or not anyone has written them down. A culture review can help find and name them. If you do have written values, comparing them with day-to-day reality is part of the work.
How long does it take?
Usually weeks rather than months. It depends on the size of your organisation and how deep you’d like to go, and we’d agree a timeline together when we plan it.
How much does it cost?
There’s no standard price, because each culture assessment is shaped around you. We’ll talk through what would be most useful and give you a clear figure before you commit.
Is it confidential?
Yes. Survey answers are anonymous and conversations are confidential. We share findings as patterns across groups, never in a way that could identify someone.
Does it have to cover the whole organisation?
No. A culture review can focus on one part - a directorate, say, or two teams that have recently come together.
Could we run some of this ourselves next time?
Yes. We’re happy to share the survey questions and approach, and to work alongside your own people so they can repeat parts of it in future.
Curious about what’s helping your culture, and what might be in the way? Talk to us about a culture assessment
Organisations we've worked with
We’ve worked with cultures in housing associations, charities, public bodies and businesses. Every organisation is different, so every culture assessment is shaped around how yours works. What stays the same is an honest picture, shared with care, that helps you decide what to do next.
Two cultures becoming one - built around what customers and colleagues were both asking for
Two of London's largest housing associations becoming one - 66,000 homes, two distinct cultures, and the question of how to build something genuinely shared rather than one organisation absorbing the other.
Read case study →
Culture change built on how services were delivered, not what was written on a wall
A community trust born from decades of activism, with brand values that felt bold on paper but hadn't yet changed how services were delivered or how teams worked day to day. Sports, housing and arts ran as different organisations to the person walking through the door.
Read case study →Strong organisational cultures grow from common ground, shared ways of working, and an environment that makes coming together easier than pulling apart. We work with leaders and their people to make that practical - a culture everyone can use in the work they do.
Define the organisational culture you want to create, with the people who’ll be part of it - practical enough to use every day, with a clear place to start.
A culture change programme that helps your culture take hold in everyday work - one team, one practice, one week at a time.
Embedding organisational culture with your people - helping the culture you want stay true, and re-energising it when other things crowd it out.
The Cultural Web is a model for understanding and mapping organisational culture across six interconnected elements. It helps you see how stories, rituals, symbols, power structures, controls, and organisational structures shape the way things are done.
Edgar Schein's Culture Model explores organisational culture at three levels - visible artefacts, stated values, and the deeper underlying assumptions that really drive behaviour. It helps organisations get beneath the surface of what their culture actually is.
The Competing Values Framework is a model for understanding organisational culture by mapping it across two dimensions - flexibility versus stability, and internal versus external focus. It reveals which of four culture types your organisation leans towards.
The Iceberg Model is a systems thinking tool that helps you look beneath surface-level events to find the patterns, structures, and mental models driving them. It's a way of seeing the deeper causes behind what's happening in your organisation.
A practical guide to developing organisational culture. Cuts through the theory to explain what culture actually is, why most culture change programmes fail, and how to develop culture in a way that lasts - by working with your organisation as a living system, not a machine.
How to assess whether your organisation is genuinely ready for change - looking at the whole system, not just the surface. Covers what to examine, how to gather honest insight, and how to use what you find to build a change plan that works with your organisation rather than against it.
Silos between teams aren't the problem - they're a signal. What organisational silos reveal about the conditions shaping how your people work.
Most culture change efforts don't last. The pattern is remarkably consistent - and it points to something fundamental about how culture actually works.
An organisational culture assessment is one of several ways into our culture change work. To see how it fits with the others, and the thinking behind them all, visit our main Culture Change page.
