BG Lab: Enabling the Workplace – How Companies Build Culture that Performs

by Carel Ariola, Editorial Contributor

The Challenge

Global employee engagement remains stubbornly low. In 2024, only 23% of employees worldwide were engaged, and Gallup estimates the cost of low engagement at $8.9 trillion—about 9% of global GDP. Loneliness and stress are elevated, and fully remote workers report higher loneliness than onsite peers—putting sustained pressure on culture, well-being, and performance.

A Counterintuitive Case

In a recent staff survey distributed to all employees at Birches Group LLC, employees were asked what they valued most about working for the company, and the most cited value was workplace culture. This might sound predictable, but Birches Group is a remote-first organization. Across global operations spanning North America, Oceania, Asia, and Europe, there are no large office spaces, and staff meet only for deliberate scheduled activities once a quarter—possibly less.

Culture is a set of shared beliefs and values that shape patterns of behavior. In remote and hybrid work settings, the core question for HR and business leaders is: Can we deliberately design the conditions that enable people to do their best work across locations and time zones?

Creating an enabling environment is a core responsibility of the organization, regardless of how work is delivered. Through policies and practices that promote clarity, responsiveness, and growth, staff are enabled to contribute meaningfully to the mission of the organization.

An Enabling Environment Encompasses:

• Clarity: Work conditions that focus on explicit outcomes, standards, and decisions
• Connection: A commitment to growth through collaboration with employees
• Capability: A commitment to deliver internal services

The Birches Group Model

Birches Group’s work focuses on purpose over process, and this philosophy shapes how work is delivered. It translates to a set of enabling practices and work features that broadly facilitate and support performance.

Clarity, Trust, and Autonomy

At Birches Group, there are no fixed shifts, no attendance checks, and no paperwork to file for what was done for the day. Staff set their schedules based on clear, agreed-upon outputs. Leaders invest time to clarify deliverables and standards. Whether staff join as experienced employees or fresh out of college, they are given autonomy to deliver work without handholding or unnecessary control.

Birches Group has consistently delivered on its commitments, with business units completing the vast majority of their planned deliverables. Year after year, performance results highlight staff’s individual achievements and business units’ completed goals.

This model shifts energy from compliance to ownership and is especially effective for remote work.

Deliberate Engagement

• Corporate engagement is sustained through deliberate in-person activities, such as training and targeted alignment sessions, designed to tackle complex problems that benefit from live interaction.
• For two hours each day, the team maintains core hours when staff should be available online to respond to questions or ask for support. These core hours facilitate communication and reduce the lag inherent in asynchronous work schedules.
• While HR continues to facilitate group activities to bring staff together, employees are also empowered to form interest groups or social clubs. These groups—such as food, fitness, parenting, and gaming—allow staff to engage around shared interests outside of work. This builds a stronger sense of belonging and engagement.

Service-Oriented and Digitally Enabled Services

• Frictionless internal services are a key component of an efficient employee experience and free up capacity for higher-value work.
• Birches Group focuses its tools and platforms on simple solutions that facilitate work. This includes a knowledge base where employees can access shared information and HR services that are enabled online. HR staff continues to be available for consultation and support on nuanced cases. Birches Group continues to build its tools in response to evolving needs and technologies.

These deliberate practices have resulted in shared norms at Birches Group, such as respect for deadlines, a commitment to surfacing issues early, a bias for clarity and responsiveness, and respect for one another’s time.

The Bottom Line

When employers invest in deliberate practices that enable work—clarity of outcomes, autonomy with guardrails, psychological safety, and a strong digital backbone—employees feel empowered to do their best work.

Birches Group’s experience shows that culture is a system of choices that enables people to do great work—together— wherever they are.