SHRM26 Debrief · Modern Employee Experience · #1589
Building Culture by Design: Stop Leaving Your Greatest Asset to Chance
with Christie McMullen
& Carrie Graham, PhD
& Carrie Graham, PhD"We must stop treating culture like a vending machine and start treating it like a blueprint."
What it was about
Culture that isn't intentionally designed happens by default, costing organizations in turnover, burnout, and lost productivity. HR has to build it deliberately, using an organizational framework (AIM: Analyze, Improve, Move) paired with an individual learning framework (ERA: Engage, Retain, Apply).
By the numbers
86.2%
Cited as the retention risk figure representing the cost/likelihood of losing an employee when culture is left to default rather than designed.
almost half a million dollars
Cited as the annual cost of lost production tied to turnover and culture-by-default, varying with organization size.
18 times
Cited as roughly how many times a person needs to practice a new behavior in front of others before mastering it.
Key notes
- Define what culture you actually want before doing anything else — you can't hit a target you can't see, and vague intentions default to accidental culture.
- Use the AIM framework (Analyze, Improve, Move) at the organizational level and the ERA framework (Engage, Retain, Apply) at the individual learner level to move from culture-by-default to culture-by-design.
- Analyze what's already working (bright spots) before trying to fix what isn't — legacy practices kept 'because we've always done it' often no longer serve anyone.
The contrarian takeThe speakers argue that 'work/life balance' as commonly discussed doesn't really exist as a fixed state. What actually matters is the felt sense that employees can balance work and home life, and that felt sense outweighs compensation as the top reason people stay.
Take this back Monday
Do this for your team
After your next training, follow up by asking each person how confident (not how skilled) they feel applying it.
Say this in your next leadership meeting
Culture that isn't intentionally designed happens by default and costs us in turnover, burnout, and lost productivity.
Watch out for
- Letting organizational culture happen by default (reactive, disengaged, high turnover, no learning strategy) instead of designing it intentionally.
- Delivering information as a one-time 'flood' (one-and-done training or announcement) instead of repeating it in smaller, spaced doses ('drip, drip, drip').
- Not telling people the plan or the outcome of a meeting in advance, leaving them to fill the gap with anxiety, gossip, and their own imagined 'movie script.'
Fun fact · Carrie Graham, PhD
Carrie Graham's research pinpoints organizations losing $1,900 per employee every year on ineffective training.
If this landed, see these
↳ Go deeperCulture is King: Laying a Strong People Foundation for Business SuccessPushes culture-by-design further: HR as 'guardian of the soul,' not just process owner.⇄ The counterpointChange-Ready or Change-Resistant? How to Assess and Elevate the Mindsets That Drive AgilityAIM and ERA fix the doing side of culture; this session says readiness is a being problem frameworks can't touch.✦ The unexpected oneExpanding the Circle: How HR Leaders Build Influence That MattersDesigning culture on paper still needs someone with the influence to make it stick.