Growing a business is exciting—new people joining, goals getting bigger, clients becoming multi-regional, fancier Slack channels but all that fast growth can make you wake up one day and realize, “Wait, who are we anymore?”
Yes, culture can take a hit and crash during business scaling, but growth doesn’t have to trade for this. With the right mindset and a few good HR moves you can show up and burn brighter than ever.
Your employee well-being and mental health is another aspect which resilient HR strategy should prioritize.
Atul Tiwari
So, here we are again, bringing you another insightful episode on our leading HR podcast in India, The CHRO Mindset with Atul Tiwari, a seasoned HR professional with 18+ years of experience in global HR strategy.
Ready to take notes!
Sustainable Business Growth, Organizational Work Culture, and the Tension Between!
Before we dive into the whole HR playbook of what should be done and what not, let’s recall the definition of what is what.
With sustainable business growth, we mean that an organization is expanding its operations, revenue, and impact over time without compromising its core values, organizational culture, employee well-being, or long-term stability.
But is achieving sustainable business growth practical or just another conference jargon?
For sustainable business growth, employees must work hard, think innovatively, show resilience, and stay ready to adapt to the growth dynamics.
And what will be the outcome? Crumpled mental peace!
Let’s take a popular real-world example that went global in the news.
The Uber Story: When Growth Outran Culture.
A bold startup, Uber set out to change how the world moves in Silicon Valley around 2009 with a clear mission—to disrupt the taxi industry, go global, and grow fast — no matter what.
And they did grow!
Within just a few years, it spread to hundreds of cities, raised billions in funding, and became one of the world’s most valuable startups.
However, it looked like a perfect business success story from the outside, inside it, something was breaking.
Its employees worked in high-pressure environments where aggression was rewarded, and ethics took a backseat. Complaints of harassment, discrimination, and toxic leadership were common. HR turned a blind eye. People didn’t feel safe speaking up.
In 2017, a former engineer named Susan Fowler exposed the culture in her blog post, and it went viral, triggering investigations, media storms, and public outrage.
Its C-suite executives resigned. The CEO, Travis Kalanick, was pulled down. Its investors and the public demanded change. Uber’s shiny image cracked. It had to slow down, reflect, and rebuild — this time with culture at the core.
So, what do you learn? Growth seems flashy until it crashes down, and it does, often when not taken care of!
But don’t get petrified. We have a complete playbook for you to ace this. Let’s decode together.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a 2025-Ready Internal Culture
While it’s easy to motivate your employees to perform better every day, during the course of development, employee burnout is real. But here’s a catch, HRs hold powerful levers—from accelerating growth to amplifying employee engagement by 1000X.
When we talk about organizational culture, it isn’t a one-time initiative but is constantly growing with everyday action, intentional frameworks, and a consistent link to business strategy.
Curious to learn more? Listen to the full episode with Atul Tiwari on our leadership podcast, The CHRO Mindset—available now wherever you stream.
Here we are decoding the strategies that you can introduce and weave into your current workplace culture.
1. Align your organization’s purpose with your employees’ strengths.
When your employees work in their strength zones, business outcomes become achievable, and culture gets enhanced effortlessly. Atul stresses that culture must ladder up to real business objectives—and not just stay inside HR playbooks.
For teams to thrive under the pressure, two conditions must be true:
- They are doing what they are good at, and
- Their strengths are enough to drive sustainable business growth
So, as HRs, it’s crucial for you to understand your employees’ strengths and assign them responsibilities that support your organization’s long-term goals and vision. This practice evolves into a culture that’s not burning for growth but glows from an affinity to perform like a star.
2. Build psychological safety, so that they perform their best without fear.
With the fear of being constantly criticized, judged, put downs, and bad reviews, employees will always struggle with productivity and utilize their innovative energy in surviving rather than performing. Google’s project, Aristotle revealed that psychological safety is the key to team effective performance and guess what, we approve of it also.
Psychological safety plays a big role in fostering:
Through the SHEV framework (Seen, Heard, Encouraged, Valued), Atul also backs it up. He offers a simple but powerful lens to measure the emotional backbone of your culture. When people feel safe speaking up, challenging ideas, and admitting mistakes without fear—they contribute more authentically.
3. Make your employees trust their leaders.
To work toward a common goal, both employees and managers must align their mindset and resolve conflicts proactively.
And how is this achievable? Well, transparent leadership is the key!
In growth phases, trust isn’t a soft skill—it’s a performance multiplier. When leaders are transparent with their teams, the culture secures itself in the times of high uncertainty.
Atul calls out the importance of “democratic and co-creative” leadership. In his view, culture flows from the top, but it’s built with everyone. Leaders must first model the values they preach—through how they listen, decide, and communicate so that employees start modelling it too.
And that’s the first step to teaching your employees to look up to their leaders when things get rough.
4. Create growth and development opportunities for your employees.
A culture that invests in people grows faster for sure.
Atul emphasizes upskilling internal talent and training both frontline and leadership teams. It’s not just about plugging skill gaps—it’s about signaling to employees that your organization sees their potential the way it is.
In fast paced environments, this focus on growth becomes a key lever for retention, agility, and internal mobility.
The fastest way of building that talent pipeline is to upskill or reskill the existing workforce who are really great performers and have high potential.
Atul Tiwari
And we completely agree with Atul.
The best strategy is to trust your existing employees more than new hires and you’ll always go high. Want to know why? Because these employees know about your processes and gaps inside out.
5. Focus more on transparent communication and clarity between teams.
Ever listened to this, half of this world’s problems arise due to lack of communication. Even in the corporate world, 80% of workers desire more transparency.
That’s right. As companies scale, roles change, structures evolve, and things get messy. Like really messy, where goals are not communicated effectively, OKRs change faster than weather, and reviews are worse than an apocalypse on Saturdays.
But according to Atul, clear communication—about roles, expectations, and purpose, is non-negotiable.
Yes, this is correct, because transparent communication:
- Ensures goals are understood and KPIs are known,
- Reduces misalignment, and
- Helps employees see their careers in the bigger frame
So, make sure whenever you communicate, you listen too!
6. Invest in your employees’ experience and you’ll have them around.
Your employees are your biggest asset. Why won’t you invest in them?
To keep your employees hooked to your company, work on their experience.
Culture is felt most in the day-to-day moments. Atul shares that engagement doesn’t come from grand gestures—it comes from small, consistent signals of care: being remembered, being appreciated, and being supported.
This human touch, when scaled properly, builds deep loyalty and emotional connection to the workplace. HR technology is crucial in workplaces, but human interaction is irreplaceable.
Now that we know that it’s not only possible to achieve sustainable business growth but doing that without exhausting your people and internal culture is as easy as remembering a nursery rhyme.
Loving these insights? Tune into Atul Tiwari’s complete broadcast only on our HR leadership podcast.
Can Organization Work Culture be Measured Before It Breaks?
Yes, of course! Measuring culture is crucial to achieve long-term business success.
Similar to other business impacts, culture can be measured as well if you decode the metrics—quantitative KPIs and qualitative indicators.
Let’s begin
| Quantitative KPIs |
| Metric | What It Measures | Sub-Metrics / Indicators |
| Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) | Whether your organization is a good place to work. | % of Promoters, Passives, Departmental breakdown |
| Retention Rate | Signals satisfaction and engagement. | Voluntary vs. involuntary exits First-year attrition rate |
| Internal Mobility Metrics | Tracks employee movement within the organization. | Avg. time to promotion Role change satisfaction score |
| Participation in Internal Initiatives | Employee engagement efforts | Training attendance rate % of employees in cross-functional teams |
Let’s now shift focus to the metrics that reveal the deeper sentiments behind your culture:
| Qualitative Indicators |
| Indicator | What It Measures | Sub-Metrics / Indicators |
| Pulse Surveys (Open-ended Questions) | Employee sentiment and perceptions around culture and leadership. | Common keywords or themes Suggestions per employee |
| One-on-One Feedback Loops | Insight into communication and cultural barriers. | Frequency of manager-employee check-ins % of feedback acted upon |
| Slack/Townhall Sentiment Tracking | Unfiltered reactions and sentiment during company-wide conversations. | Top conversation topics Positive vs. negative sentiment ratio |
By combining these metrics, you gain a view of both hard numbers and human elements, that shape your organizational culture and ensure it supports sustainable business growth.
Key Takeaways for HRs
HRs, you know that you are the silent drivers of business growth that interlocks its hands with the organizational culture. Here are five golden keys to that desired business growth that doesn’t get followed by harassment, mass resignation,
- Monthly checkups– Track company goals and internal culture every month to bridge the gaps.
- Ask for Feedback– Is your company going faster than they can handle? Ask and act.
- Maintain anonymity– Give everyone that sweet space to express their heart out without exposing them.
- Prioritize growth and culture– It will not work until you start balancing both. No sidelining either of these.
- Be ruthless to protect your culture-Even if it involves showing managers the exit door.
Enjoyed the blog? Stream the insightful episode where Atul Tiwari decodes the secrets to drive high performance while keeping your employees engaged, only on our HR podcast, The CHRO Mindset.