Organisational culture assessment
A clear read of how your organisation actually works day to day - the climate your people live in, and the few changes that would make the most difference.
Our organisational culture assessment is a clear read of how your organisation works day to day - the climate your people actually experience, not the values on the wall. We look at what really happens: how decisions get made, what gets rewarded, what gets let slide, whether people feel safe to speak up. Then we give you the few patterns that matter most - what’s strong and worth protecting, what’s getting in the way, and what to change first.
“Culture” is easy to talk about and hard to pin down, so we focus on the part you can see and actually shift - the lived climate. It’s what makes the findings usable, and where any culture change starts.
75% of organisations say they struggle to build a high-performance culture (McKinsey, State of Organizations 2026). Much of the difficulty is that culture is hard to see clearly from the inside - which is exactly what an assessment gives you.
When a culture assessment helps
An assessment earns its place when a specific problem keeps surfacing and you need to see what’s underneath it:
The situation | How an assessment helps |
|---|---|
Strategy and behaviour are pulling apart | Shows where the gap actually sits, so you work the real obstacle, not a guess. |
The engagement scores are telling you something | Goes underneath the numbers to what’s driving them, so you act on the cause, not the symptom. |
Change keeps stalling | Surfaces the habits absorbing each attempt, so the next one lands. |
You’re new in post | Gives you a fair, clear read of what you’ve actually inherited. |
Two teams or cultures are coming together | Reads both sides, and where they’ll grate, before a merger or restructure makes it urgent. |
You’ve set new values, or you’re refreshing them | Reads whether they’re actually lived - and what it would take to make them stick. |
What we look at
Most organisations come to us with values already in place - or a new set they’re shaping. We start there: your values, principles and vision are the reference point, and we read how fully they show up in day-to-day reality.
We do that through five angles - the angles we use to test whether what you stand for is actually lived, not just written down:
Integrity
Whether what people actually do matches what you say you stand for. Behaviour under pressure is the evidence here - values are easy to live when the week is going well.
We gather specific moments - a budget call, a difficult exit, a shortcut taken or refused - and read each against the value it tests. The finding is a map of where word and deed sit close, and where the distance deserves attention.
Safety
Whether people can speak up when something doesn't match your values - even when it's difficult. Speaking up is the mechanism that keeps every other value honest.
We measure it properly, on Edmondson's psychological-safety scale, and read the results by team and level rather than as one average. Safety is rarely uniform - knowing where it's strong tells you as much as knowing where it's thin.
Learning
Whether the organisation learns and adapts when it falls short of its own standards, rather than blaming and moving on. How a shortfall is handled is one of the clearest tests of a value in practice.
We trace recent examples - a missed target, a mistake, a complaint - and follow what happened next. The pattern shows whether shortfalls turn into adjustments, and where a little more curiosity would compound.
Respect
Whether the way people treat each other reflects the values you've set out, whatever their role. Respect is the value people test most often, because every working day supplies the evidence.
We listen across roles and levels for how meetings run, how disagreement is handled, and how the quietest voices fare. Respect can be genuinely strong in one part of an organisation and strained in another - the averages hide both, so we don't use them.
Recognition
Whether what gets rewarded, celebrated, and promoted actually reflects what you say you value. It's the angle with the most concrete evidence - promotions, praise and pay all leave a trail.
We read that trail: recent promotions, who got celebrated for what, and what went unremarked. Where it lines up with your values you have proof to point to; where it doesn't, you've found one of the strongest levers culture work has.
The five angles stay constant; how we read them, we shape around you - your values, structure, roles, locations and operating model - so the picture fits your organisation, not a template.
Why these five angles
We look at climate rather than culture in the abstract because climate is the part you can actually see and change - how policies play out, what behaviour gets rewarded, what it’s like to work here on a normal Tuesday. Culture is the deeper story underneath; climate is where it shows up, and where change takes hold.
The five angles are how we examine your values in practice - the conditions that decide whether what you stand for gets lived or stays on the wall. Some may already be among your own values; others are the conditions that let any set of values take hold. Integrity is the most direct: the fit between what you say and what people actually do.
The five angles are where the gap between what an organisation says and what it does tends to open up. Integrity is the master signal: the distance between the values on the wall and the decisions made when no one’s watching. Safety decides whether people speak up when they see something that doesn't match your values, or sit on it until it's expensive - which is why we look at it closely, drawing on Amy Edmondson's work on whether people feel able to speak up. Learning is what happens when the organisation falls short of its own standards: is it met with curiosity or consequences? Respect is whether the way people treat each other - across every role, not only when it's easy - reflects what you say you stand for. And Recognition is often the clearest signal of all - what actually gets someone promoted, praised, or quietly tolerated tells people what the organisation really values, whatever the handbook says.
These five are our lens, refined across many organisations. They’re deliberately about lived experience, not aspiration - what happens, not what’s intended.
How it works
We read the climate the way it’s actually lived - through more than one lens, so the findings hold up:
- We measure it - a whole-organisation survey across the five angles. We show you where views differ - leadership versus the front line, team by team - not just the average. The disagreement is usually where the story is.
- We listen - interviews across a cross-section of people, not only leaders. We look at real, recent situations: what actually happened, and how that squares with what the values would predict.
- We watch, where it helps - time spent seeing how things really run.
- We make sense of it - drawing on twenty years of organisational-development work, we read the gap between what’s said and what’s lived, and bring you the patterns that matter.
The thinking behind the method
No single method captures a climate on its own, so we use several and cross-check them. A survey tells you how people feel, but not why - and an average hides how differently teams can experience the same organisation. Interviews reach the why, but only from the people in the room. Watching how things run shows you what people actually do, rather than what they say. Used together, they triangulate: a finding has to show up in more than one before we treat it as real.
We interview across a cross-section, not just leaders, on purpose. The people at the top are often the least able to see the climate the front line lives in - and the gap between those two views is frequently the most useful thing we find.
Rather than asking people to rate abstractions, we look at real, recent situations - what actually happened, and how it squares with what the values would predict. It’s a recognised approach (the critical incident technique), and it surfaces the lived climate far better than a rating scale.
And we show you the spread, not just the average. A climate isn’t one number: two organisations with the same overall score can be completely different places to work. Where people disagree - by team, by level, by how long they’ve been here - is where the real picture lives.
What you get
A working session, not a report filed and forgotten. We walk you through:
- A clear picture of your climate - how it works in practice.
- The strengths worth protecting - not just the faults.
- The few things getting in the way, and why.
- The handful of changes that would make the most difference.
Where two things are both true and in tension - “we want people to take ownership” and “people don’t feel they have the authority to” - we show you both. That’s usually where the useful conversation starts.
How we hand it back - and what happens next
The assessment ends in a working session, not a document dropped in your inbox. We take you through what we found in person, so it lands as something you understand and can use, rather than a report read once and filed.
Some of the most useful findings come as pairs - two things that are both true and pulling against each other. We name those tensions rather than smoothing them into one tidy message, because the tension is usually the thing worth working on.
From there it’s your call. Sometimes the picture is enough and you carry it forward yourselves. Sometimes you want us alongside for the change that follows - a focused piece of work, or a fuller culture change programme. And if what you need turns out to be lighter than you feared, we’ll say so.
Focused now, or continuous over time
This is a focused, one-off deep read of your culture as it is right now. If what you want is the whole organisation tracked continuously - culture as one thread among eight - that’s States of Vitality, our organisational-health platform. Different job: depth now, versus the wider picture over time.
Common questions
How is this different from an engagement survey?
A survey tells you how people feel and gives you scores. This tells you why, and what to do about it. We read more than the numbers - interviews, observation and the gap between your stated values and what people actually experience - and go deep on culture specifically.
Who do you involve?
A cross-section, not just leaders - the survey goes to everyone, and we interview across levels, teams and tenure. The people inside a culture are often the least able to describe it, so the outside read, and the gaps between groups, are where the value is.
Can you assess our culture if we don’t have defined values?
Yes. We read the culture you actually have - what’s rewarded, what’s tolerated, how people treat each other - written down or not. If you’re shaping new values, that read is the perfect place to start.
How long does it take?
It’s usually weeks rather than months, but it depends on the size of your organisation and how complex the picture is. We build each assessment around you, and agree the timeline when we scope it.
How much does it cost?
There’s no standard price - we build each assessment around you, so the cost reflects the size of your organisation, the scope, and the depth you need. We scope it with you and give you a clear figure before you commit.
Is it confidential?
Yes. Survey responses are anonymous, interviews are confidential, and we report in groups and patterns, never in a way that identifies an individual.
Want to see your culture clearly? Talk to us about a culture assessment
Organisations we've worked with
We've assessed and worked with cultures across housing, charity, public sector and corporate settings. Every organisation is different, so every assessment is shaped around how yours actually works - but the common thread is the same: an honest picture, given straight, that leaves you better placed to act.
Two cultures becoming one - built from three questions found in the evidence, not written in a workshop
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.
Read case study →Culture doesn't change when you talk about it. It shifts when you work with the patterns and practices that shape how your organisation actually functions.
Target culture design gives you your target culture: the critical few behaviours your people will actually live, the traits worth keeping, and the redesigned signals - reward, recognition, promotion, leader modelling - that produce them, mapped from where you are today to where you are heading. We design it with your people, so the culture is genuinely theirs.
A Culture Change Programme is the governed set of workstreams that takes your Target Culture Design and makes it real across the organisation: the leadership signals, the everyday behaviours, the reward systems and the rituals that carry a culture, running day to day. We deliver it with your people, so the new culture is owned rather than imposed.
Keeping Culture Embedded keeps the culture you changed lived in everyday behaviour, and builds your own people's ability to tend it. Your leaders' attention, your champions network and your everyday routines carry the culture, so it stays the way things are done here. You run it, with an optional light rhythm from us as much or as little as you want.
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.
A culture assessment is the first step in how we approach culture change. For the full picture - including how we co-design and embed change once you know where you stand - visit our main Culture Change page.
Thinking about a culture assessment?
Tell us what's prompting it and what you want to understand. We'll be straight with you about whether an assessment is the right move.