A new HBR study challenges the idea that culture is something you can fix with better communication. Over 18 months, researchers followed 164 senior leaders across different countries and sectors, tracking how they approached cultural change and how their efforts were received by employees.

An article by HBR highlights that what they found was that culture doesn’t shift because of new vision statements or internal campaigns, but rather when leadership habits and systems change. 

Many of the organizations studied had recently launched formal culture initiatives (posters, trainings, value rollouts), but 72 percent of them saw n real improvement in trust, retention, or engagement a year later. Employees described those efforts as disconnected from what they actually experienced at work. 

By contrast, companies where leadership changed how they ran meetings, made decisions, or responded to disagreement saw significant increases in employee trust (up to 26 percent in some cases) even when no formal “culture program” had been introduced. 

One reason for this seems to be consistency. In the study, 59 percent of employees said they saw senior leadership act in ways that contradicted company values at least weekly. These weren’t one-off moments, but regular patterns that made people tune out anything branded as culture.

The takeaway isn’t that communication doesn’t matter, but that it has to follow action. Perks, slide decks, and slogans aren’t enough if the basic systems of decision-making and power don’t shift. Employees notices when values aren’t applied consistently, especially when there’s a cost involved.