Top 5 Company Culture Consulting Firms (2025)
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Company culture determines whether strategies succeed or fail, whether talent stays or leaves, and whether organisations adapt or stagnate. Yet culture remains one of the most misunderstood aspects of business – treated as perks and values statements rather than the behavioral norms, unwritten rules, and shared beliefs actually driving how work gets done. Poor culture costs organisations through disengagement, turnover, innovation failure, and the inability to execute even the best-laid plans.
The challenge facing leaders is that culture can’t be mandated through policy or changed through communication alone. It requires understanding the deeply embedded patterns shaping behavior, designing interventions addressing root causes rather than symptoms, and sustaining effort through the inevitable resistance accompanying meaningful change. The right culture consulting firm brings the expertise, frameworks, and objectivity needed to diagnose cultural realities and guide transformation that sticks.
This guide examines the top 5 company culture consulting firms in the UK, evaluating their methodologies, expertise, and track records to help you select a partner capable of driving genuine cultural evolution aligned with your strategic objectives.
Quick Comparison: Top Culture Consulting Firms (2025)
Rank | Firm | Location | Core Focus | Best For |
1. | scarlettabbott | York & London | Behavioural science + culture change | Complex transformations requiring strategic depth |
2. | Culture Consultancy | London | Award-winning culture transformation | Large enterprises needing proven results |
3. | People Puzzles | UK-wide | HR-integrated culture development | Growing businesses needing practical support |
4. | The Culture Club | UK-based | Culture shaping through experience | organisations prioritizing employee experience |
5. | Corporate Culture Group | UK-based | Workforce engagement & culture | Businesses tackling behavioral challenges |
1. scarlettabbott
Overview:
At the intersection of consultancy and creativity sits scarlettabbott, a York and London-based agency that’s spent nearly two decades redefining what employee engagement and company culture transformation actually means. Their distinction lies not in following culture trends but in combining rigorous behavioral science with compelling storytelling to create interventions that don’t just inform – they inspire belief and drive action.
What Sets scarlettabbott Apart:
Many culture consultancies measure sentiment or improve communication. scarlettabbott goes deeper, examining the psychological and cultural factors determining whether people merely understand what their organisation stands for – or genuinely believe in it and act accordingly. This focus on belief rather than awareness creates culture that withstands pressure, change, and uncertainty.
Their methodology integrates four core disciplines that competitors typically offer separately:
Behavioural Science Foundation: Every recommendation rests on evidence about how humans actually make decisions, form habits, and respond to organisational change. This scientific rigor prevents the “flavor of the month” initiatives that generate enthusiasm but fade quickly because they ignore fundamental behavioral realities.
Strategic Storytelling: Information doesn’t engage people – meaning does. scarlettabbott crafts narratives helping employees understand not just what their organisation does, but why it matters, how they contribute, and what success looks like. These stories create emotional connection alongside intellectual understanding.
Data-Driven Insight: Rigorous research uncovers what’s actually driving or inhibiting engagement and cultural health in your specific organisation rather than applying generic best practices. Employee listening, cultural diagnostics, and journey mapping reveal the real barriers and opportunities unique to your context.
Design Thinking: Culture interventions must work within complex organisational realities – multiple audiences, competing priorities, limited resources, change fatigue. scarlettabbott designs solutions that aren’t just theoretically sound but practically implementable and sustainable within real constraints.
Service Capabilities:
- Culture Change Programmes: Designing and delivering multi-year transformation initiatives that shift behaviors, not just attitudes
- Leadership Communication: Equipping executives and managers to communicate with authenticity, clarity, and impact – recognizing leaders as the primary culture carriers
- Internal Campaigns: Creating communications that rival consumer marketing in quality while serving culture and engagement objectives
- Strategic Narrative Development: Crafting compelling stories that bring values and purpose to life
- Employee Journey Design: Mapping and optimizing critical touchpoints that shape cultural experience
Why organisations Choose scarlettabbott:
When culture transformation is business-critical – not nice-to-have – organisations need partners combining intellectual rigor with creative execution. scarlettabbott brings both: the strategic thinking to diagnose complex cultural dynamics and the creative capability to design interventions that work within organisational realities. Their nearly two-decade track record with recognized global brands demonstrates sustained impact through economic cycles, leadership changes, and strategic pivots – the test of genuine culture embedding versus temporary enthusiasm.
Ideal For: organisations facing significant culture transformation – businesses in strategic pivots, companies where current culture inhibits performance, leadership teams committed to multi-year culture evolution, and enterprises requiring sophisticated approaches to complex cultural challenges.
2. Culture Consultancy
Overview:
Culture Consultancy helps organisations elevate business performance through award-winning workplace culture change solutions, with a proven track record including clients featured in The Times Top 100 Employers.
Key Strengths:
- Award-winning results: Clients achieving recognition including Times Top 100 Employers
- Merger integration expertise: Successfully supported major organisational combinations
- Leadership buy-in focus: Proven at securing executive commitment to culture change
- Growth support: Helping organisations scale while maintaining culture (22% team growth for Lovell)
- Results-driven: Measurable outcomes beyond engagement scores
Approach: Moving organisations beyond corporate rhetoric to actually living their values, creating thriving high-performing cultures through practical, results-focused interventions.
Ideal For: Large enterprises, organisations navigating mergers/acquisitions, companies seeking external validation of culture excellence, businesses prioritizing measurable outcomes.
3. People Puzzles
Overview:
People Puzzles provides HR consultancy with integrated company culture development, matching businesses with local directors who understand specific industry needs and bring pragmatic, knowledgeable support.
Key Strengths:
- Industry-matched expertise: Directors assigned based on sector knowledge
- Local presence: Working closely with one knowledgeable regional director
- HR integration: Culture work connected to practical HR processes and systems
- Growth-focused: Supporting rapidly growing businesses with scaling challenges
- Pragmatic approach: Realistic solutions considering limited resources and constraints
Approach: Understanding what drives organisational culture, identifying risks and priorities, then achieving goals through organisational restructures, HR process redesign, and team upskilling – all with commitment, pragmatism, and positivity.
Ideal For: Growing businesses, mid-sized organisations, companies needing HR and culture support combined, businesses wanting local, accessible consulting partners.
4. The Culture Club
Overview:
The Culture Club specializes in shaping, shifting, and celebrating culture through better employee experience and internal communications, making “better days” for employees and organisations.
Key Strengths:
- Employee experience focus: Culture shaped through moments that make people feel valued
- Strategic narrative expertise: Defining purpose, values, behaviors, and EVP
- Communications excellence: Internal comms that cut through and engage
- Employer brand building: Standing out to recruit and retain the best talent
- Hands-on implementation: Practical support beyond strategy documents
Approach: Creating the kind of moments making people feel valued, appreciated, and considered – the secret to employer differentiation. Working across employee engagement, business strategy, and change to deliver communications that inform without overloading and engage authentically.
Ideal For: organisations prioritizing employee experience, companies needing communications-led culture work, businesses building employer brand, teams wanting hands-on partnership.
5. Corporate Culture Group
Overview:
Corporate Culture Group helps organisations engage their workforce and implement positive workplace culture, specializing in solving strategic, cultural, and behavioral challenges.
Key Strengths:
- Behavioral challenge expertise: Tackling difficult cultural and behavioral issues
- Workforce engagement: Practical approaches to engaging employees at all levels
- Strategic problem-solving: Addressing big organisational challenges systematically
- Implementation support: Moving beyond diagnosis to actual workplace change
- Positive culture focus: Building environments where people thrive
Approach: Specialists in workforce engagement and positive culture implementation, focusing on solving the big strategic, cultural, and behavioral challenges that inhibit organisational performance.
Ideal For: organisations facing cultural obstacles to performance, businesses with workforce engagement challenges, companies needing behavioral change expertise, teams tackling difficult cultural issues.
What to Look For in Company Culture Consulting Firms
- Diagnostic depth before prescription: Firms investing time understanding your actual culture rather than applying standard frameworks
- Behavioral focus not just values: Consultants addressing behaviors, systems, and norms – not just creating values statements
- Evidence-based methodology: Approaches grounded in organisational psychology and behavioral science rather than management fads
- Leadership development integration: Culture change requiring leadership behavior change, with coaching and capability building
- Implementation support beyond strategy: Partners helping execute transformation, not just delivering reports and recommendations
- Change management expertise: Understanding that culture transformation is organisational change requiring resistance navigation
- Measurement frameworks: Clear methods for assessing cultural reality and tracking transformation progress
- Sector-relevant experience: Consultants understanding your industry’s cultural dynamics and constraints
- Long-term partnership approach: Commitment to sustained support through multi-year culture evolution
- Proven track record: Verifiable client results, case studies, and measurable outcomes from past culture work
FAQs
How long does culture change take?
Meaningful culture transformation typically requires 3-5 years for full embedding. Initial awareness and language shifts happen within 6-12 months, behavioral changes emerge at 12-18 months, and genuine cultural norms solidify at 2-3+ years with consistent reinforcement. Quick culture “fixes” rarely create lasting change – real transformation requires sustained commitment, leadership consistency, and patience through inevitable resistance and setbacks.
Can you change culture without changing leadership?
Rarely. Leadership behavior drives culture more than any other factor – employees take cues from what leaders do more than what they say. If current leadership created the existing culture and won’t adapt their own behaviors, transformation faces enormous obstacles. Successful culture change requires leadership willingness to examine and modify their own behaviors, decisions, and approaches – not just mandate change for others.
How do you measure culture?
Culture measurement combines quantitative surveys assessing employee perceptions with qualitative methods revealing actual behavioral norms. Effective approaches include employee surveys tracking cultural health, behavioral observation identifying actual practices, exit interview pattern analysis, decision-making process examination, and ethnographic research uncovering unwritten rules. The best measurement reveals both how culture feels and how it actually functions.
What’s the difference between culture and engagement?
Culture is the behavioral environment – the norms, beliefs, and unwritten rules shaping how work gets done. Engagement is individual response to that environment – how committed and motivated people feel. Strong culture doesn’t guarantee engagement (toxic cultures can be strong), and high engagement doesn’t mean healthy culture. Culture provides the context; engagement measures individual experience within that context. Sustainable engagement requires culture supporting it.
Should we define our culture or describe existing reality?
Both. Start by honestly diagnosing current culture – what actually happens, not what leadership wishes or believes happens. Then define aspirational culture aligned with strategy – where you need to be for success. Transformation happens in the gap between current and desired state. Describing only current reality provides no direction; defining only aspiration ignores starting point. Effective culture work requires clarity on both states and the path between them.
How much does culture consulting cost?
Investment varies significantly based on organisation size, challenge complexity, and scope required. Small to mid-size organisations might invest £25,000-£100,000 for focused culture projects, while comprehensive transformation programmes for large enterprises can exceed £300,000+ annually. Consider cost against the price of poor culture – research indicates disengagement and cultural dysfunction cost UK businesses billions annually in turnover, lost productivity, and failed initiatives. Quality culture consulting should demonstrate clear ROI through improved retention, performance, and business outcomes.