Company values are often the first building block of culture, and for good reason: they play a defining role in who you attract, who you keep, and who chooses to leave.
In fact, LinkedIn found that more than half (59%) of professionals in Europe say they wouldn’t work for a company that doesn’t share their values, and 55% said that not even a pay raise would change their minds.
The importance is even more pronounced in North and South America, with 87% of workers in the U.S. and 85% in Brazil stating that they consider it important to work for companies that align with their values.
But simply publishing a list of organizational values in your company handbook won’t create a high-performing corporate culture.
In our Freedom of Work podcast episode, The Most Overlooked Culture Strategy in Remote Work, culture strategist Gina Schinkel explains that culture doesn’t just naturally spring into existence at a workplace. It has to be thoughtfully built, reinforced through shared practices, and made visible in everyday work — especially in a remote setting.
In fact, the biggest mistake Schinkel sees? “Just presuming things will happen. Things need to be set up with intention and communicated clearly. You need to have a culture of inclusion where people feel like they belong.”
That’s where workplace rituals come in: intentional “micro habits” that turn values into meaningful moments and make culture human, consistent, and scalable across distributed teams.
Key takeaways:
- Core company values shape behavior when they’re reinforced through consistent, shared rituals.
- Well-designed rituals create a sense of belonging, reduce ambiguity, and make culture scalable across remote and global teams.
- Global organizations can build a core culture and encourage regional team members to adapt rituals to local norms.
Why Rituals Matter as Much as Values
Without rituals, values are merely aspirational. Teams understand their definitions, but they lack a roadmap for applying them to their teams, clients, or individual contributions.
This gap widens in remote environments, where employees aren’t immersed in daily workplace culture, including exposure to informal office norms.
Rituals alter this dynamic, translating core values into consistent action by establishing shared expectations regarding employee behavior. Over time, these repeated behaviors become “micro habits” that reinforce what matters most in your organization.
For example, rituals can be as simple as teams practicing a culture of recognition by starting every meeting by doling out peer-nominated shoutouts and kudos. It’s a simple opener that teams can quickly adopt and start looking forward to.
Or a company that values trust might implement a weekly async update to share progress, blockers, and learnings openly. Over time, this ritual reinforces transparency, psychological safety, and accountability.
Ultimately, rituals strengthen employee engagement and demonstrate how to best show up, how decisions are made, and what success looks like. These micro habits also help strengthen remote employees' participation in organizational culture and connections with coworkers.
How Rituals Codify and Reinforce Company Values
Values should start at the leadership level and be sustained through repetition in daily work. Nothing torpedoes corporate values faster than haphazard adoption only when it's convenient.
“The evolution of work is very much about mission-driven leadership, especially when you have remote workers,” explains Schinkel. “It's very important to enable your talent and to build a foundation for a culture of experiments, where people understand what desirable behavior or outcomes are.”
Once a ritual is established, companies need to commit to it, as its absence is noticeable if it is abruptly discontinued. That commitment turns values from abstract ideals into shared standards.
Here are examples of how companies can implement rituals to reinforce values:
- Curiosity: Offer monthly learning credits and encourage employees to share what they learned regularly. The ritual signals that continuous learning is not optional — it’s part of the job.
- Inclusion: Rotate facilitators in team meetings so different voices are heard, reinforcing the idea that everyone has a role in shaping discussions and that diversity is valued as a competitive advantage.
- Transparency: Initiate weekly open Q&A sessions with leadership to provide employees with regular access to information, normalizing openness.
- Ownership and accountability: Use end-of-project debriefs to share successes, failures, and decisions, reinforcing that issues may occur, but outcomes and constructive dialogue matter.
- Psychological safety: Enact regular retrospectives that explicitly invite feedback on what didn’t work, without penalty, to reinforce that honesty is valued and reduce fear of making mistakes.
- Respect for time and focus: Set up meeting-free blocks or company-wide “focus hours” to reinforce respect for deep work and boundaries.
In each case, the ritual reinforces corporate values by making them observable — not just words on the website.
Codify Company-wide Values While Allowing for Regional Subcultures
Global organizations face a unique challenge: how can you maintain a cohesive corporate culture while embracing local differences?
The goal shouldn’t be to force uniformity. Instead, use your shared values as a north star to create alignment and reinforce positive employee behaviors. From there, let rituals adapt locally and allow subcultures to form naturally.
“Even though you have a company culture, you also have little subcultures,” said Schinkel. “It ties right back into rituals and values. It starts in the direction where you're headed, looking at goals from the heart, and then it starts at the front door with leadership and teams.”
For example, a global company might maintain a consistent onboarding ritual focused on storytelling by relaying to new hires:
- Why the company was founded
- How decisions are made
- What behaviors are celebrated
While the core ritual remains the same, each region can tailor the format — including live sessions, asynchronous videos, or peer-led discussions — to fit local preferences and time zones.
Schinkel emphasizes reinforcing values by asking simple, repeatable questions:
- What behavior do we want to see?
- How do we want people to treat each other?
- Do we encourage a growth mindset?
When these questions are embedded into rituals, such as retrospectives, performance reviews, or planning sessions, they help values stay front and center across regions.
Examples of Rituals That Scale Globally
Developing shared rituals does not have to be complex, time-intensive, or expensive. The most effective ones are often simple and easy to repeat, especially as your business expands.
Examples of rituals that work well across distributed teams include:
- Daily or weekly standups that reinforce collaboration and shared ownership.
- Monthly retrospectives that encourage openness, reflection, and continuous improvement.
- Regular recognition moments that reinforce appreciation and respect, such as public shoutouts or peer nominations.
- Decision-making frameworks that clarify accountability, reduce confusion, and empower team-building activities.
- Onboarding rituals that help new hires absorb values quickly, regardless of location.
- Remote-friendly rituals, such as async updates and structured written communication, that respect time zones.
- Storytelling threads where employees share wins, challenges, or customer impact stories.
- Kindness rituals, such as gratitude moments or charitable initiatives that humanize work and community support.
- Growth mindset/quarterly reflection rituals where employees reflect on what they’ve tried, learned, and would do differently to reinforce experimentation and continuous improvement.
- Virtual water cooler spaces, such as Slack channels, where employees share pictures of their weekends, favorite movies, book recommendations, or other non-work-related thoughts to deepen bonds.
Look for rituals that will provide value to your teams. Those promoting trust, transparency, accountability, knowledge sharing, and appreciation are all good places to start.
How to Build Rituals That Stick [And Mistakes to Avoid]
You’ll find that some habits don’t stick. Maybe your organization loses enthusiasm over time, lets other responsibilities get in the way, or the ritual feels inauthentic or performative. Trial and error is key.
Leaders should brainstorm potential rituals to incorporate based on a few guiding principles:
- Prioritize behaviors underlying your values. If a ritual doesn’t clearly reinforce a value, it’s unlikely to gain traction.
- Aim for simplicity, repeatability, and ease of adoption. Complexity creates friction, especially for global teams, and leads to abandonment.
- Model rituals consistently. When leaders fully participate, rituals gain credibility and momentum.
- Regularly evaluate adoption and success. As the business evolves, some rituals may need to be adapted or retired.
- Evolve with global and regional needs. Flexibility increases participation and relevance.
- Embed rituals into existing workflows. Lean on natural moments, such as meetings, planning cycles, or onboarding, to make adoption feel natural.
- Make the “why” explicit. When teams understand the values rituals reinforce and why they exist, participation becomes less performative.
Set yourself up for success by avoiding overloading teams with too many initiatives or new expectations at once — this only dilutes overall success, as employees don’t know what to prioritize.
Focus on increasing commitment, particularly from leadership. Allowing some leaders to opt out will only weaken overall credibility and program adoption. Don’t be afraid to sunset initiatives that continuously fail to deliver.
Also, make sure to review rituals with a global lens: Are your remote and global workers participating, and could you tailor the initiative to increase inclusivity?
Why Values and Rituals Matter Even More for Global Teams
When employees work across borders and time zones, rituals bring them together.
Distributed workers who don’t share physical spaces can still feel connected to their team and company when culture is visible and intentional. They can form bonds through shared experiences, whether those experiences are async or virtual.
Operationally, rituals reduce ambiguity around communication, decision-making, and expectations. This is especially important as your business scales globally. When executed well, rituals embed organizational culture into everyday work, no matter where employees are based.
An EOR Helps You Reinforce Values & Rituals for Your Global Team
Rituals and values can shine when the overall employee experience is consistent and reliable, especially across global teams. Otherwise, they might ring hollow if basic HR needs aren’t being met.
An Employer of Record (EOR), like RemoFirst, ensures a positive employee experience by handling key HR functions, including the onboarding process, global payroll, employee benefits, and compliance across countries — the fundamentals that build trust and loyalty.
Localized HR guidance helps maintain cultural alignment while respecting local laws and norms. Reliable onboarding builds a feeling of belonging from day one, while accurate payroll and benefits management reinforce fairness, transparency, and accountability over time.
RemoFirst helps companies hire, manage, and pay employees in more than 185 countries, while maintaining compliance and consistency across their global workforce. We enable leaders to build thriving cultures and prioritize essential rituals, rather than spending time navigating complex legal and compliance frameworks.
If you’re scaling globally and want help supporting a people-first international culture, schedule a demo with RemoFirst.
