Everyone wants to feel connected to their company culture.

I did too.

When I started my first corporate job, my initial priority was ensuring that I’d make enough money to be able to survive and maybe have enough money left over to see a movie or go to a concert once in a while. I didn’t pay too much attention to factors like company values, missions, or culture.

Soon, though, I sensed that there was more to employment than money. I started noticing how people reacted when I told them where I worked. Their physical responses—their tone of voice, eye contact, whether they leaned forward or backward—all told me that they were inferring something about me by my choice of employer. Even more powerfully, I started to notice the same reactions in myself.

Over the years, I came to realize how strongly our choice of employment either complements or injures our sense of self.

When we work for an organization whose values mirror our own, we experience the powerful alignment of being paid to be ourselves. This integration between professional and personal identity doesn’t just make work more enjoyable—it validates our core beliefs about what matters in the world and amplifies our sense of purpose. Conversely, a misalignment can create a persistent cognitive dissonance that follows us home each day, quietly eroding our sense of authenticity.

We all have only so many hours to live on this planet, and we know that a good chunk of them will be spent doing something that serves the primary need of making us financially safe. But deep down, we want more. We want those hours to matter.

And of course, virtually every potential or current employer will tell you that they’re doing work that matters. Nearly every company web page I see these days talks about mission and culture. They want to show you that they are doing things that matter in a way that will appeal to you. But are they?

I have found that every company culture can be placed in one of three motivational categories:

Coercive Cultures

Primary Drivers: Threats, fear, and punishment

In coercive work cultures, power is highly centralized, and compliance is achieved through explicit or implicit threats. Workers’ movements, productivity, and breaks may be tracked by electronic systems, and failure to meet algorithmically determined metrics results in automatic warnings or termination. Workers are in constant fear.

Overview: Coercive cultures are good at extracting the bare minimum of effort from people. No one is having fun. Team members’ motivation stops where the fear ends. People are always trying to escape to somewhere better, and the most skilled team members escape more quickly.

Utilitarian Cultures

Primary Drivers: Rational economic exchange. Employees provide labor for cash.

Utilitarian work cultures operate on a calculative basis where the relationship between employee and organization is primarily transactional. Compensation may be heavily commission-based and performance directly translates to financial rewards. 

Overview: In utilitarian cultures, the implicit contract is: “Performance = cash.” The bond between employee and organization is primarily based on mutual advantage. While we all want to be paid fairly for our efforts, I have found that money does not translate into meaning. When compensation is all there is, motivation, performance, and loyalty end exactly where the cash stops.

Values-Based Cultures

Primary Drivers:  Shared beliefs, values, and a sense of purpose that transcends purely economic exchanges.

In values-based cultures, employees are motivated by commitment to the organization’s mission and by alignment with its core values. The company has built its identity around a sense of mission and purpose and attracted team members who believe in the cause.

Overview: People often describe working at such organizations as “more than just a job” and may make personal sacrifices because they believe in what the organization stands for. They are proud of where they work and gain satisfaction by knowing they are making a difference.

Application

So, which kind of culture do you work for and/or lead?

In my experience working with large and medium-sized companies, most workplaces exist on a spectrum rather than fitting neatly into one category. Organizations can exhibit mixed characteristics, and different departments within the same company might operate under different cultural models. Microcultures don’t always align with the macroculture.

In general, though, most companies think they are values-based. In reality, though, only about 25%* of organizations are regarded that way by their employees.

The danger is that an organization that thinks of itself as a values-driven employer in theory has become a transactional (or even coercive) employer in practice.

The real measure of internal culture isn’t found on posters or company web pages. It is how often companies that are trying to inspire people through shared values are looked at by employees as merely transactional.

It ultimately comes down to two questions…

From team members: “What kind of company do I work for, and are they who I am?”

From leadership: “Who do we think we are, and are we really that?”

Team members will know the answer by the feeling they get when they tell others where they work. Leaders will get their answers by asking their team members and listening to their answers.

*Gallup: Are Your Company Values More Than Just Words 12/14/22