WHY CULTURE NEEDS GATHERING: REFLECTIONS FROM CULTURECON 2025
Gathering your people together can drive awesome outcomes for your business…if you do it right. But too often, internal events are treated as just another calendar fixture. Done well, they can align teams and unlock performance to drive revenue. Beyond that, they can serve to strengthen culture in a way that no other single program can.
This September, I attended CultureCon 2025, Australia’s Workplace Culture Conference at the ICC Sydney and I learnt a lot! I have become so accustomed to attending sales-based conferences and it was really interesting to attend a learning event where the majority of the audience were either business leaders like me, or HR and Employee Success champions. The vibe was a lot less hyped, but the sense of common challenges and a shared purpose had an energy all of its own. And I liked it!
We heard from the Author of Smarter Collaboration, Heidi K. Gardener, who really demystified some of the barriers around collaboration for me. Remote working seemed to me to be a huge block when it comes to getting teams working well together, but it was the least important compared to things like time pressure, structure and incentive. She also gave us some real-life examples of where building advanced networks within an organisation led to vastly improved business outcomes, which is not always the way management chooses to work.
There were some fascinating topics discussed, both on stage and among the delegates during the networking breaks. It goes without saying that any event like this is going to wrestle with AI in some fashion during its agenda, but it was refreshing that it didn’t dominate the entire agenda. While we accepted that there are some challenges to be overcome, more important themes like Trust, Wellbeing, and Inclusion were more central. Looking at ways to build high-performance teams and still ensure happiness in the workplace really resonated with me. Interestingly, teams that are high-performance are the drivers of positive workplaces and happy environments.
All the speakers were of really high calibre. What kept occurring to me was that all of this focus on culture comes back to being in the presence of other people. Not all the time, obviously. For some of the businesses in the room, they are a remote-only organisation - they have no offices and the majority of their work tends to be undertaken on video calls or via other digital channels. But every one of them still needs there to be a level of gathering. Whether it is one-on-one or small teams, through to whole of organisation get-togethers, coming together is an essential part of a great culture. Gathering doesn’t guarantee a great culture, though, and we need to be very deliberate in why and how we do it.
These ideas reinforced something we at CAPITAL-e have long believed: great cultures don’t emerge; they are forged in shared experience. That’s why we’ve seen a surge in demand for meaningful internal gatherings, from sales kick offs to global offsites. Businesses need to be closer to their people than ever before. And for their teams, feeling that they are in a safe and strong place drives better outcomes across all fronts. According to McKinsey’s The State of Organizations report 2023, “more than 70% of employees say a sense of belonging directly influences their workplace satisfaction.” and one can only imagine that this has increased over the past 2 years. There is empirical proof that people need to belong and be seen, which is one of the drivers behind me starting Gathering Matters - a platform to explore how intentional gathering strengthens belonging, performance, and well-being in an increasingly disconnected world. I will be sharing more on that soon.
At CAPITAL-e, we’re helping companies design internal events that do more than tick some culture box. We build event experiences that create connection, clarity, and momentum. Whether it’s a team offsite, a global kick off, or a leadership retreat, we bring strategy, creativity, and care to every gathering. Because when done right, these moments become culture-defining. If you’re thinking about how to bring your people together with purpose, we’d love to help.
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