5 Global Workplace Culture Lessons of 2025 and 5 Culture Predictions for 2026

In 2025, organizations around the world invested in culture work with passion. They refreshed their values, clarified purpose, and hosted launch events that felt energizing and hopeful.

But across industries and continents, a pattern emerged: defining culture is not the same as living it.

Many leaders assumed the “hard part” was over once the values were written and shared. What they discovered instead is that culture only begins to shift when leaders do something harder: show up every day, using the values in real decisions, conversations, and moments of truth.

Below are the five most consistent culture lessons we saw in 2025, followed by the five shifts we believe will define workplace culture in 2026.

Five Global Workplace Culture Lessons of 2025

1. Culture change stalls without visible CEO ownership

Many leaders believed that once values were refreshed and launched, their part was complete and the team would carry it forward.

What they learned is that culture doesn’t carry itself.

Values only start to live when leaders commit to showing up larger than life with them. CEOs and founders have to:

• Know the values better than anyone
• Talk about them more than anyone
• Use them to make real decisions publicly
• Catch and correct misalignment out loud
• Tie them to consequences in hiring and “unhiring”

Some leaders found it awkward to talk about their own values repeatedly. But the ones who got over that awkwardness saw a shift. They discovered that overusing the values is actually the work — not a sign that the work is done.

As one leader told us after embracing this, “Once I stopped worrying about sounding repetitive, culture started to feel alive.”

2. Accountability problems were rarely about KPIs

Most leaders define accountability in terms of KPIs, goals, scorecards, or Rocks.

Those formal commitments matter — but they’re only half the picture.

What broke most often in 2025 were the informal commitments:

• “I’ll follow up after the meeting.”
• “I’ll send that later today.”
• “I’ll check in with the client.”

These small promises carry the bulk of day-to-day trust inside a team. When they aren’t kept consistently, people start to:

• Second-guess each other
• Spend time chasing work
• Lose confidence in follow-through

This is the true Accountability Gap: the space between what people intend to do and what consistently happens.

The companies that cracked this focused on making reliability a cultural expectation, not a performance tactic.

3. Presence does not equal performance

One of the biggest workplace trends in 2025 was pressure to return to the office. Leaders expected that physical presence would drive productivity, collaboration, and connection.

But research suggests otherwise.

A University of Pittsburgh analysis of S&P 500 firms with return-to-office mandates found that RTO did not improve company performance and often reduced employee satisfaction.¹

In real experience, teams showed that:

• Being present is not the same as contributing impact
• Hybrid or in-office status did not automatically improve output
• Organizations that assumed presence equals performance struggled with clarity and trust

This reinforced an important lesson: visibility is not contribution.

Strong cultures define impact, not activity.

¹ Source: University of Pittsburgh School of Business, “Return-to-Office Mandates Don’t Improve Employee or Company Performance,” business.pitt.edu

4. Executive teams do not automatically become culture champions

Another major mistake leaders made in 2025 was assuming that once values were defined and launched, the executive team would naturally adopt and model them.

That did not happen — at least not automatically.

In many organizations, most executives quickly fell back into old habits under pressure, defaulting to task focus and “getting things done.” Only a minority leaned in with genuine leadership, making values visible in their teams and encouraging others to do the same.

What made the difference was not a mandate, but signal and reinforcement:

• Leaders who used the tools (e.g., recognition, feedback, tools like Catch & Correct™) were noticed and rewarded
• Their behavior became a visible example for others
• Their teams began engaging with culture actively, not passively

A key insight here is that culture transformation works best when the CEO is personally coached — not because the coach “fixes culture,” but because the CEO models the behavior and invites the executive team to follow.

Cultureful’s work increasingly focuses not just on the organization as a whole, but on the leadership team dynamic — helping executives become the highest-performing team in the company.

5. Values only matter when they are operationalized

Almost every company in 2025 had values. Few used them as a real operating system.

Values become real when they are not just visible but used:

• To recognize behavior that reflects organizational standards
• To correct behavior that deviates from those standards
• To make decisions, especially hard ones, visible and aligned
• To inform hiring, development, and even exits

When values are referenced selectively or without consistency, employees notice — and they lose faith in them.

Values without integration into decisions, feedback, promotion, and accountability remain aspirational, not anchored.

Five Workplace Culture Predictions for 2026

Prediction 1: Leaders will have to stop assuming and start listening

The leadership mindset of “I know what’s best” will continue to fall short.

In 2026, leaders who succeed will be those who ask better questions, listen carefully, and act on what they hear — through surveys, interviews, and real conversations with their people.

Many organizations have not meaningfully asked employees how they are doing, what they need, or what is getting in the way for a long time. That gap is becoming harder to ignore.

Employees want to feel that their leaders care about them as humans, not just as roles or resources. When people feel unseen or unheard, engagement erodes quietly — long before performance metrics reflect it.

Listening is becoming a baseline expectation of leadership, not an optional skill.

Prediction 2: Traditional annual reviews will continue to disappear

Annual, performance-only reviews no longer reflect how people work or how trust is built.

Leaders are moving away from infrequent evaluations and toward shorter, regular check-ins — conversations that include performance, values, support, and wellbeing.

A critical part of this shift is the rise of 360-degree feedback. Leaders cannot see everything, and people often show up differently depending on who they are working with. Without input from peers and direct reports, important behaviors — both positive and harmful — remain invisible. There are amazing culture software tools and mobile apps available to power these feedback loops anonymously and more frequently, including our own Cultureful OS.

When teams are given safe ways to give feedback in multiple directions, organizations surface reality faster. And when people feel heard in those conversations, engagement rises. People invest more when they feel cared for.

These moments are less about scoring performance and more about strengthening alignment.

Prediction 3: Culture practices will become more systematic and automated

(Without losing the human element.)

The most effective organizations will automate the process of culture, not the relationships.

Recognition, feedback, values reinforcement, and regular check-ins are increasingly being supported by systems that make consistency easier — especially when teams are busy or under pressure.

Automation will not replace human connection. It will protect it.

Without systems, culture depends on memory, individual effort, and good intentions. With systems in place, leaders can reinforce the right behaviors repeatedly, even when competing priorities arise. Again, Software tools are available like Cultureful OS that will automate many culture driven activities such as core values nominations, pulse surveys and correlation systems like our CoreScore tool.

The organizations that thrive will be those that remove friction from doing the right thing.

Prediction 4: CEOs will recognize they have the most to learn

More leaders are beginning to realize they are not hiring a coach to fix their culture.

They are hiring a coach to understand themselves better — to uncover blind spots, learn how to lead with values, and strengthen the leadership team as a unit.

A major shift is happening as CEOs step into driving the initiative personally, even when facilitation is outsourced. Culture transformation accelerates when leaders are willing to be coached, challenged, and held accountable alongside their teams.

When the CEO leads the learning, the rest of the organization follows.

Prediction 5: Human expertise will matter more, not less

Despite the rapid adoption of AI and DIY tools, leaders are rediscovering a critical truth: culture is emotional, contextual, and deeply human.

Technology can support communication, analysis, and execution — but it cannot feel the lived experience of working inside an organization.

This is especially true when it comes to defining core values. Tools can help process input, but only people can articulate what actually feels true. When values are declared without reflecting the real experience of employees, trust erodes and alignment disappears.

Teams disengage when culture feels manufactured instead of owned.

The organizations that thrive in 2026 will use technology to support culture practices — while keeping leadership, meaning, and values grounded in human connection.

Bringing It All Together

Looking back at 2025 and ahead to 2026, one theme connects every lesson and prediction:

Culture does not fail because leaders don’t care.
It fails because leaders underestimate the consistency required to sustain it.

Culture is not changed in workshops.
It is changed in daily behavior.

It is shaped by what leaders model, what they reinforce, what they tolerate, and what they repeat — even when it feels awkward, slow, or uncomfortable.

The organizations that thrive in 2026 will not be the ones with the best language, the biggest launches, or the most tools.

They will be the ones whose leaders:

• Listen before assuming
• Model values visibly
• Reinforce accountability consistently
• Use systems to protect the culture they care about
  
  

Culture does not stick through intention alone.

It sticks through leadership, rhythm, and repetition.