Microcultures in Today’s Office

What are microcultures and how are they contributing to an increasingly diverse workforce? 

New microcultures are emerging among today’s ever diverse workforces. Workers now vary more than ever across geographies, employment types, working arrangements (on-site, hybrid, remote), demographics, and motivations. Leaders are challenged with uniting this diversity into a cohesive corporate unit, while ensuring that various groups are given the opportunity to thrive.

What Are Microcultures?

In a nutshell, a microculture within a company occurs when employees with commonalities join together. As Mary Rusterholz, chief people officer at Constant Contact, put it, “Workplace microcultures form when employees with common identities, challenges, job functions, or even geographical locations formally or informally gather together, sharing in how their specific commonalities play a role in defining their experience at work and in life.”

A failure to communicate the existence of microcultures within an organization can have negative consequences for a company. In a recent report from Deloitte, the firm cited a case where technology workers interviewing for jobs in non-technology organizations often seek collaborative cultures that are high-risk, high-reward, and lack strict rules. While such a culture may indeed exist in the technology function of an organization, a recruiter may instead emphasize the overall corporate culture that is quite different from the one the worker seeks.

“This monolithic view of culture is no longer fit for purpose in a world where an increasingly diverse workforce seeks greater autonomy and customized work experiences—and one in which organizations compete more on agility and customer responsiveness than standardization and top-down control,” the report states. “Microcultures can help enable organizations to set themselves apart—leading to major impacts for talent attraction and retention.”

A key to harnessing the power of microcultures is aligning around a set of global values while encouraging some autonomy of functions, teams, and geographies. “For an organization of our size and scale, it's normal for teams to have microcultures,” Robin Leopold, chief human resources officer of JPMorgan Chase, said in a recent article from Deloitte. “But how those cultures come together and rally around our firmwide values of service, heart, curiosity, courage, and excellence is the secret sauce.”

Thinking Small to Go Big

In a post-pandemic world, the relationship between an employee and their job has changed. As such, the form that culture takes is hard to define, let alone cultivate. Even still, bosses might want to start thinking small. 

Around 71% of business and HR leaders think individual teams within an organization are the best place to cultivate culture, according to Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends survey. But only 45% say their organization is doing something about it, and just 12% say their organization is doing “great things” to support microcultures in the workplace. When they do, companies are more apt to achieve desired business outcomes and positive human outcomes, such as creativity, collaboration, and problem solving.

When companies support microcultures, it drives improvements in “things like health, well-being, mental and physical safety, stronger skills and employability, and sustainable pay,” said Michael Griffiths, workforce transformation offering leader at Deloitte. “Organizations are really keying in on that conversation around not having a monolithic culture strategy because it hasn’t worked and it hasn’t driven that idea of human sustainability—the degree to which an organization can create value for people as human beings, rather than workers.” 

The Different Faces of Microcultures

Take as an example the “flotilla-style” cultural approach developed by Dutch health and nutrition company Royal DSM, in which strategy and overall direction comes from the center but is activated by teams with their own microcultures that are empowered to drive desired outcomes. “We aim to fuel our talent pool in equally agile ways, through a more liquid workforce that replaces an exclusive direct employment model,” said the company, which in May 2023 merged with the Swiss company Firmenich to form a new entity named DSM-Firmenich.

“Culture lives in the actions of all of us, so, although it can be steered and guided, it cannot be from scratch but only evolved and grow over time,” Geraldine Matchett, former co-CEO at DSM-Firmenich AG, wrote. “This is why we’ve created the DSM Culture Compass. This simple tool allows each of us to have a stake in our culture by bringing it to life in our own unique way. Like a traditional compass, it guides us. But we are all navigators and it’s up to us to find our own way forward. In this sense, DSM is like a flotilla: We have a clear point on the horizon we are aiming for and each boat must determine how to get there; but a good part of what keeps us together, as one flotilla, is our culture.”

Another example is General Motors (GM), which formed agile teams through four network roles—brokers (or boundary spanners), connectors, energizers, and challengers. GM leverages these roles in different ways to develop innovation and move it into the operational phase. Adopting this perspective allowed GM to tap into not only the right human capital, but also critical social capital when it came to innovation in autonomous vehicles, according to Michael Arena, chief talent officer at GM.

When GM acquired Cruise Automation in 2016, it intentionally did not fully absorb the team in order to protect its microculture led by a founder. Kyle Vogt, cofounder of Cruise, was viewed as a connector, as he successfully brought together autonomous engineers, software developers, data scientists, and other specialists. GM tapped into boundary spanners to connect the entrepreneurial team with the operations side of the business for access to resources like engineering or testing. Preserving this microculture helped GM become the first in self-driving test vehicle assembly in a mass-production facility.

Technology’s Role in Microculture Development

Deloitte recommends that companies tap into data and technology to help build and guide microcultures. “Consider investing at the organizational level in survey-based tools, AI, and other data collection and analysis mechanisms that allow organizations to understand microcultures in real-time,” its report states. “While sensing of microcultures can be used to course-correct teams or groups that have gone rogue, it can also be used to shine a spotlight on best practices or learnings across groups. This approach can provide insight into work groups’ functioning and allow leaders to relinquish tight control of microcultures.”
For example, software can be used to scan emails and chats in an aggregated and anonymized manner to gauge engagement and flag potential problems. If, say, there are microaggressions in a particular microculture, the analysis may find normal patterns of engagement for one population but a drop in another.

Building Microcultures: A 4 Step Guide for Leaders

Carol J. Geffner, president of CB Vision in San Diego, outlines four steps leaders can take to influence microcultures. It starts with spending time “on the ground,” as she puts it. “Working closer to the ground can offer leaders important insights into the inner workings of their organization, writes Geffner. “It can also help them build relationships with individuals and groups who hold the potential to influence the broader organization.” These relationships feed into the second step of the process: communications. “Being intentional about building open, transparent, and honest communication with your team and external stakeholders is an investment in relationship-building,” says Geffner.

The next step is focusing a leader’s energies on where it should be focused. “It is important to clarify the boundaries within which you can build a successful microculture and deliver results,” Geffner says. “Once you've accomplished this, leverage resources to also help your team focus their attention on goals where they are most likely to have an impact.” And finally, leaders can help build and guide microcultures by deciding where to divest and invest moving forward.

Mobility’s Challenge in Maintaining Healthy Microcultures

As the way we work changes, recruits have new expectations around the working experience, particularly around where they work. Promising prospects often lead toward businesses with cultures that encourage and support mobility, according to London-based Centuro Global. “The challenge for businesses is twofold: create a culture that embraces the idea of a mobile workforce and then keep their unique, high-performance culture strong, even when the team isn’t physically close to one another.”

Leaders may worry that recognizing and empowering microcultures will cause their company to lose its identity or mission, but thoughtful use of data and new technologies, coupled with knowledgeable and trained managers, will ensure a right balance is struck among employees, the microcultures those employees form, and the company those microcultures are a part of. Graebel’s 2023 Annual State of Mobility Report confirmed that an overwhelming majority of workers believe their relocation has benefited employers. The top reason given, specified by 39% of those surveyed, was that it fosters relationship building, which in turn leads to more cohesive teams.

A failure to communicate and embrace microcultures is ultimately a failure to recognize the diversification of the workplace. Passive or willful disregard for microcultures that exist will discourage prospective and existing workers. If, however, microcultures are allowed to flourish and are shaped to align with a company’s guiding principles, the end result will be a happier workforce, better collaboration, stronger outcomes, and increased productivity.