There’s no such thing as the perfect workplace culture, but some ideas definitely win out over others. Looking to build on what’s known about different experiences of New Zealand employees, we’ve scoured the web to find some of the top advice from global business leaders.

People-first culture:

“In determining the right people, the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.”

— Jim Collins, Business consultant and author of Good to Great

Prioritising mental health and wellbeing:

“Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.”

— Simon Sinek, motivational speaker and author of Leaders Eat Last

Equal empowerment, gender equality and women safety in the workplace:

“Diversity, or the state of being different, isn’t the same as inclusion. One is a description of what is, while the other describes a style of interaction essential to effective teams and organizations.”

— Bill Crawford, psychologist and author of Leading Differently 

Work-life harmony:

“Balance suggests a perfect equilibrium. There is no such thing. That is a false expectation…. There are going to be priorities and dimensions of your life; how you integrate them is how you find true happiness.”

– Denise Morrison, CEO of Campbell Soup

Redefining the human in HR:

“Everyone talks about building a relationship with your customer. I think you build one with your employees first.”

– Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President, Apple

The continued reign of Cloud:

 Cloud is about how you do computing, not where you do computing.

– Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware

Automated systems:

“IT and network operations teams have been using automated systems for some time. This is encouraging a culture of collaboration between different IT stakeholders.”

– Massimo Ferrari Consulting Product Manager, Ansible Security Automation, Red Hat

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace:

A team is not a group of people that work together. A team is a group of people that trust each other.

– [Tweet, 2014] Simon Sinek, motivational speaker and author of Leaders Eat Last

Employees as brand ambassadors:

“Success is best when it’s shared.”

– Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO, Starbucks

Opportunities to thrive for career growth:

“If you want something to happen, you have to make people able and you have to make them want to.”

– Dr. Steve Kerr, Former Chief Learning Officer of General Electric and Goldman Sachs 

A culture where risk-taking is okay:

“If you can push through that feeling of taking a risk, really amazing things can happen.”

– Marissa Mayer, President and CEO, Yahoo!

Arguably the most influential book on workplace culture at the dawn of the millennium shared the idea that success is not all or even foremost about strategy. Most important is the people – and fostering the environment of great relationships with your brand or initiative.

With innovations that are increasingly people-centric and geared towards improving the workplace culture, more businesses appear on track to achieving this modern vision.