What Makes Culture Change Stick in Complex, Global Organisations?

Culture work is rarely simple. For HR leaders, the task of shaping engagement, trust, and belonging is complex enough in a single office, let alone across dozens of sites, time zones, and languages. In a recent Culture in Action podcast episode, heard Hazel Hogben’s direct experience of these challenges.

Hazel Hogben is Chief People Officer at Unilode Aviation Solutions. When she joined the aviation logistics provider two years ago, the company had just entered private equity ownership and was at the start of an ambitious change journey.

• Over 36 countries in scope
• More than half the workforce without desks or digital access
• Mixed leadership styles and fragmented ways of working

In short: not a textbook starting point.

Yet today, Hazel and her colleagues are seeing positive cultural momentum: lower turnover, stronger internal promotion pipelines, and greater emotional connection across the business. Her reflections offer valuable lessons for HR leaders in similarly complex environments.

Lesson 1: Put communication before programmes

When culture feels fragmented, many leaders rush to define values or launch new HR initiatives. Hazel took a different tack: she focused first on how to talk to people, and how to listen back.

At Unilode, more than half the workforce are technicians in maintenance workshops. They don’t sit at desks and had little access to SharePoint or intranet announcements. Early communications often missed the people who mattered most.

Hazel’s team prioritised:

• Mobile, two-way platforms: Introducing Mo gave technicians access to leadership updates, recognition, and conversations in their own languages.
• Timely, human updates: “Unilode in a minute” videos, filmed on iPhones by executives, are shared every two months.
• Feedback loops: Push notifications ensure speed, but pull functionality lets teams ask questions and share feedback.

Why this matters: Without accessible communication, any cultural initiative risks exclusion. Building an inclusive, two-way channel lays the foundation for everything else.

Lesson 2: Live values through rituals, not posters

Hazel and her colleagues redefined Unilode’s values, making them simpler and more resonant. One stood out: Build a Better Future — both a nod to environmental impact and a call to personal development.

But the values only gained traction because they were embedded into rhythms people could see and feel:

• Quarterly town halls (recorded for replay)
• Peer-nominated awards linked to values
• Performance conversations tied directly to behaviours and competencies
• Recognition moments shared across the organisation

One initiative, the Employee of the Year Awards, captured imaginations. Hosted via Mo, nominations poured in from across sites and functions. The peer-driven commentary was “humbling” for leaders and energising for teams.

Why this matters: Values take root when people see them reinforced in the flow of work, not just in leadership slides. Rituals, especially peer-driven ones, make values live.

Lesson 3: Measure, listen, iterate

Culture is never finished. Hazel balances data with human insight:

• Metrics tracked: turnover (now sub-20%), engagement survey scores (around 75%), and internal promotion rates (26% in one key team).
• Qualitative listening: walking shop floors, talking to technicians, asking what’s landing.

She recalls an engineer referencing a piece of comms not yet formally announced, already sharing why it mattered. For Hazel, that was proof that messages were not only reaching people, but sparking connection.

Why this matters: Surveys and dashboards matter, but culture change also lives in conversations. HR leaders need both to steer progress.

What HR leaders can take away

Hazel’s experience distils into some practical steps for anyone leading cultural change in a dispersed or deskless workforce:

• Prioritise communication access: make sure every employee can receive, and send, information.
• Co-create values and show them daily: tie them to recognition, rituals, and performance.
• Balance data with presence: KPIs are critical, but floor visits and one-to-ones reveal truths numbers miss.
• Celebrate visibly: recognition programmes build momentum, especially when peers drive nominations.
• Stay aligned with the business: HR cannot own culture alone; alignment with commercial and operational goals is essential.

The “secret sauce”: Tribe and alignment

Perhaps Hazel’s most striking reflection is that culture cannot be delivered by HR, or any one leader. It has to be a collective endeavour, grounded in alignment.

That message should resonate with HR leaders everywhere: culture change is not about HR driving from the sidelines. It is about working with peers and teams, fully aligned to the business strategy, and grounded in the belief that every role, every person, matters.