Creative employee experience strategies that shape culture change
By: Angela Handy
What you need to know
- During onboarding, recognition, communication and development, everyday touchpoints shape employee experience.
- Aligning employee initiatives to core values drives behavior change, offering a tangible example that team members can model and repeat.
- Consistent, relevant communication for deskless, in-person and digital experiences build employee trust and engagement.
![Group of employees celebrating positive company culture]()
When it comes to company culture, many think of an annual in-person retreat filled with team-building activities or a week of volunteering in the community with our peers. While these programs help team members connect, they aren’t the only ways to develop lasting company culture.
Employee experiences, like onboarding, recognition, corporate communications, weekly team stand-ups or in-person training, are everyday touchpoints that shape your company culture just as much as those larger events.
When employees feel genuinely aligned with their organization, they don’t just engage—they play an integral role in shaping, strengthening and evolving its culture. That alignment turns employees into authentic advocates who promote the organization from the inside out. It drives stronger retention, preserving institutional knowledge and fueling higher performance over time.
HR professionals and leaders looking to shift culture need to design intentional, creative experiences supported by strategic communication touchpoints. By creating moments that matter across the employee journey, organizations can meaningfully connect core values to everyday behaviors and ongoing development.
Whether your organization is hybrid, remote or globally dispersed, creating a consistent employee experience starts with embedding your core values and goals through those everyday employee touchpoints no matter where employees are located, the language they speak or shift they work.
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Why a strategic employee experience matters when leading cultural change
A strategic employee experience comes to life through intentional, creative moments that help team members feel appreciated and seen.
Develop your employee experience through memorable initiatives that go beyond messaging.
- Custom new‑hire kits that welcome employees into your culture from day one
- Guided onboarding and training journeys that reinforce values as skills are learned
- Milestone experiences that recognize progress, growth and contribution along the way
Consider a recognition moment where a manager highlights an employee for stepping in to support a teammate during a critical project. That recognition isn’t just a “shout‑out.” It becomes part of a broader experience, bringing storytelling, timely reinforcement and visible celebration together.
We recommend clients send recognition that’s timely, impactful, personal and specific (TIPS). These details create meaningful recognition that help the recipient feel seen and fully appreciated. Their peers see the positive reinforcement and are more likely to model that behavior in the future.
Continuously cultivating employee experience
Culture isn’t a one‑size‑fits‑all or a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. Company culture is shaped by your organization’s unique values, priorities, goals and people. By aligning your communications with employee experience initiatives, you create consistent, value‑driven experiences across onboarding, learning, recognition and key career moments.
When organizations consistently reinforce their values through intentional experiences and communication, culture becomes an ever‑evolving force that strengthens teams over time. This consistency helps employees understand not only what the organization values, but how those values show up in their everyday work. Over time, this builds clarity, connection and a more resilient culture, especially during growth.
Employee experience examples for onboarding
Onboarding programs introduce new hires to your culture and set expectations for the employee experience early on. By engaging an employee during their first weeks, they’re more likely to feel a deeper sense of connection with their work and their team.
Automate your onboarding process
Implementing automated employee journeys builds employee equity during onboarding, whether they’re hybrid, remote, deskless or in-office. Emails, texts and physical mail, such as employee gifts, can now all be automated. It ensures that no one gets missed, and it lifts the burden on managers or HR coordinators.
Recognize new hires in the first month
New-hire communication, including text messages or emails, guides employees through training requirements and onboarding checklists. Coordinate “desk drops” for your new teammate, and decorate their area with branded swag like mousepads or charging stands. You can also add printed materials like calendars or monitor clings that feature corporate initiatives and core values.
Example: We helped prove the importance of early employee touchpoints while partnering with a national pet retailer.
Leadership saw an increase in retention by 17% when new hires received at least one recognition within their first 30 days. Early engagement can help a team member feel like they're part of something bigger, and recognition affirms their behavior and helps them feel like they’re already making an impact.
Related: Culture of employee recognition supports retention
Review onboarding metrics
Managers play a key role in their employees’ success and team retention during onboarding. By using tools like ITA Group’s Cooleaf engagement platform, managers can identify potential risks for employee attrition by reviewing metrics like recognition, engagement or participation.
The Cooleaf platform alerts managers to employees who have not received recognition within their first 30 days and indicates whether they’ve received recognition from peers. This visibility makes it easier for managers to take action on employee engagement.
Ambassadors offer a warmer introduction to your team
Onboarding mentors, ambassador or buddy systems help new hires feel more comfortable and supported as they start.
We use this system at ITA Group. We pair new hires with an Ambassador or “onboarding buddy.” This is usually someone outside of their department. It helps new team members build cross‑functional relationships, but also creates a more consistent culture experience across teams by reinforcing shared values, norms and ways of working through trained culture ambassadors.
Programs that reinforce behavior
Initiatives such as manager and peer recognition, as well as online activities or challenges, encourage employees to embrace core values as they work to achieve big team or business goals.
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Tie recognition to core values
To keep core value messaging top of mind while changing it up, host a core value recognition challenge. Many partners we work with host recognition challenges regularly to engage employees and celebrate collaboration and innovation for that month or quarter.
Hosting a recognition challenge encourages managers and peers to celebrate one another and develop a culture of appreciation. Recognition creates great opportunities for storytelling or sharing of great behaviors with the wider team. Seeing stories of success and growth, nurtures a sense of pride and awareness, so others know what they can do in their daily activities to also demonstrate the core value.
By participating, team members can earn incentives, like points they can use towards online rewards through ITA Group’s Cooleaf engagement platform.
Related: 10 ways to promote core values in the workplace
Encourage peer and manager recognition
According to Gallup, recognition strengthens retention. Well-recognized employees are 45% less likely to leave a role after two years. Leadership recognition is a powerful tool that helps employees feel seen and motivated. Peer recognition offers more insight and visibility into an employee’s day-to-day contributions.
Writing a meaningful recognition helps both peers and managers spot core values in action. By sharing a story of a team member's success, they provide relevant context, such as their team’s goals or challenges. And sharing stories across the organization helps others understand and appreciate one another’s contributions towards success.
Tying employee experience to performance goals
Example: We worked with a global sustainability and water management service to support sales goals.
Partnering with their marketing team, we developed a superhero-themed campaign that reflected core values and business goals in a dynamic, memorable way. Alongside creative, messaging increased visibility of key roles that supported sales, unifying the experience. The results were extremely positive, and the client said, “We blew our sales goals out of the water! All of the creatives were amazing!”
By helping employees better understand key initiatives and team goals, such as this sales campaign, they can see how their role impacts the company's broader mission. This transparency uniquely engages employees, who are then more likely to become advocates of your company and mission.
Related: Read more about how we partner with teams to transform raw ideas into real results
Digital employee experience examples to drive connection
Digital employee experiences includes everything from your team’s communication channels, online onboarding resources to recognition platforms. Basically, any technology your employees use or view in their workspace regularly.
Whether employees are at a job site, hybrid or remote, multichannel communications and platform access keep teams connected. Digital employee experiences give your organization an opportunity to strategically communicate and engage employees, no matter where they are.
Integrate apps to streamline your digital employee experience
Teams have to balance a variety of apps and tools, which can feel overwhelming. Integrating apps to keep notifications streamlined ensures messages don’t get ignored.
Recognition and rewards tools, such as ITA Group’s Cooleaf engagement platform, integrate with Slack and Microsoft Teams, making recognition easy, accessible and automatic. Digital platforms highlight achievements and milestones, expressing appreciation and celebrating individual contributors across the organization. Team members can add comments, GIFs, or reactions to show support too!
Internal communities for distributed teams
Whether your organization is balancing a remote, hybrid or dispersed, global team, online communities help teams bridge distance. Specific communication channels or online groups can bring together team members with similar roles or shared interests—even if they aren’t in the same department or region—fostering a sense of community and support.
Nurture your digital employee experience with virtual engagement activities to include remote, hybrid or deskless workforces. This is where you can get creative, developing programs likely to resonate with your team, whether that’s hosting a week-long step challenge or a volunteer day.
Create communities online for desktop and mobile
Meet your people where they are. Corporate environments are more likely to rely on desktop or email access, whereas deskless employees tend to use mobile, relying on text messages or apps. Workdays can also range from a traditional 9-5 to a part-time schedule, divided by shifts.
Creating a seamless experience that is comparable to that of desk-bound or in-person employees is key. Printed touchpoints or branded experiences in common areas create consistent messaging when employees aren’t at a screen. Segmented communication can also ensure that messaging is relevant to an employee's or manager’s role or location.
Communication that builds transparency and trust
Relevant and regular communication establishes transparency and team trust. This can look like regular leadership updates or access to platforms and resources as needed.
When team members work different schedules, communicating on relevant platforms or displaying key messages in communal spaces creates consistency that employees can rely on.
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Transparency reinforces culture and alignment
ITA Group’s program “ITA Hooray!” is our celebratory quarterly event. The emailed video from an executive team member shares positive client outcomes, generates momentum and thanks team members for working hard to achieve goals—no matter their role. Email segmentation can also support specific call-out messaging for different roles or teams.
Offering visibility reduces feelings of uncertainty during change and creates a stronger connection to leadership. Simple visuals show priorities and growth, and storytelling offers a more accessible breakdown of our organization’s progress.
Predictable communication rhythms, like monthly updates or quarterly outlooks, create transparency and mean fewer surprise announcements.
Meet deskless and frontline teams where they are
Ensure your deskless and frontline workers have as much exposure to updates and messages too. Physical touchpoints like posters, wallet cards, lanyards, stickers or magnets create a unifying message and are reminders of core values or mission. Posting QR codes on posters or cards give deskless employees an easy way to check on messages or announcements, and your HR team can update the link with new videos, updates or FAQs.
Place key messages or your QR codes in breakrooms, locker areas, vehicles or at job sites. You can also add them to digital screens and internal monitors in halls or communal areas with rotating updates, messages, stories and wins.
Manager tools for deskless teams
Work with the leadership of deskless or remote teams and empower them with additional tools or resources to instill core values and to develop their employees’ journey. These manager enablement toolkits can be physical or digital and include one-page guides for coaching conversations or talk tracks for development priorities. Manager dashboards and reporting emails can also prompt specific actions about employees with specific opportunities.
Manager-delivered talk tracks, like one-page leader summaries or shift-huddle guides, keep messaging consistent throughout the year. Brand activation or welcome kits for new hires give managers the ability to celebrate major milestones and seamlessly onboard new team members.
Related: How to improve employee engagement across diverse work environments
Development opportunities reinforce a culture of growth and appreciation
Growth opportunities are important for engagement, with 67% of employees saying they want to advance their career. Organizations can support career growth with learning and development programs, mentorship initiatives, career pathing and engaging managers to cultivate talent.
Supporting employees’ growth and development builds a stronger business. Helping employees understand how each role contributes to the broader business goals motivates team members. As employees exemplify core values, they engage more with the organization, becoming strong employer-brand advocates.
Career milestone recognition
Celebrate completed training, certifications, promotions or readiness milestones. These messages connect growth back to business impact and can motivate other team members.
Peer-to-peer learning spotlights can feel more meaningful at times. A peer sees your growth or upskilling day by day, and who better to highlight your growth than that close coworker?
We often learn best when a team member walks us through a new process or feature. Encourage that behavior with recognition tied to mentorship or knowledge sharing.
Make career pathing accessible
Create an employee experience that encourages growth and development. Resources like visuals showcasing skill progress or career paths make growth feel achievable and visible. It reduces ambiguity around advancement and expectations.
Use email or platform nudges for micro-learning content. These can look like short tips, videos or challenges to encourage small steps towards growth.
You can also embed learning prompts into everyday workflows, which increases retention through repetition and relevance. On top of that, you can segment the content by role so that it’s relevant to an employee's tenure and goals.
Related: [Love your people podcast] Supporting career development and engaging with kindness
What the best employee experience strategies have in common
Company culture isn’t established with a one-off message or program. It evolves with your business goals and team members.
Strong employee experience includes common characteristics
- Alignment with company values
- Consistent leadership support and communication
- Accessibility across locations and roles
- Growth and development
Intentional employee experience reinforces behavior, encourages growth and translates into an organization’s business strategy. That’s why ITA Group engagement experts lead with a creative approach.
From onboarding and recognition to consistent communication and growth, bringing an organization’s messaging and brand personality to life through the employee experience creates a stronger, more engaged company culture.
If you’re looking to shift company culture with a platform and strategy that work together to elevate employee experience, no matter where your team’s based, schedule a demo!
![View our guide to aligning employer brand and experience]()