By Edward Pigg, CE, Axil
Most companies talk about culture as if it is something that exists on its own, defined once, communicated clearly, and then expected to hold.
In reality, culture is something that is constantly tested by how a business operates.
And nothing tests it more than growth.
We’ve just been named in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work list for the third time. But the recognition itself is not the story. The more interesting point is what it suggests: that it is possible to scale rapidly without seeing employee engagement drift in the way many organisations experience.
At Axil, we work with manufacturers across automotive, aerospace, food production and pharmaceuticals, supporting complex waste and resource operations across more than 200 UK and Ireland sites.
We’ve grown from 34 people to nearly 300, and to over £56m in revenue since 2018.
In that environment, culture does not survive through messaging. It survives through systems, supported by data, operational discipline, and how information flows through the business.
Culture is what happens between the messages
A lot of organisations treat culture as communication – values, town halls, leadership messaging.
But employees experience something very different. They experience whether decisions are clear, whether problems get resolved, and whether managers are supported to lead.
At Axil, more than half of our people work on customer sites in operational roles, often outdoors, in industrial environments and in all conditions. Many are not sitting behind desks or permanently connected to company systems.
That is why engagement matters so much to us.
The fact so many people took the time to complete the survey, share honest feedback and actively participate is important. It shows connection to the business, belief in where we are going, and a culture people still want to contribute to as we grow.
If those things don’t work, culture does not “erode” slowly. It breaks in specific places, quickly.
Scale exposes operational weakness
Growth is often described as success. Internally, it is also a stress test.
What worked when teams were small – informal communication, proximity to leadership, fast decision loops – does not scale automatically.
As complexity increases, gaps appear:
- communication slows
- assumptions replace clarity
- issues get duplicated or lost
That is where inconsistency begins.
Technology and data can help solve some of those problems, but only if they improve visibility, accountability and decision-making for people on the ground. Systems should support people, not distance leadership from operations.
Managers carry more of the system than people realise
One of the most underestimated parts of culture is middle management.
Managers are where strategy becomes reality. If they are not supported properly, the experience across the organisation becomes uneven, regardless of intent at the top.
Consistency at that level is often the difference between stable engagement and fragmentation.
Trust is built through repetition, not statements
Trust is not created by telling people what the culture is.
It is created when:
- issues are raised and actually resolved
- communication is consistent
- decisions make sense locally
- people feel safe speaking up
- standards stay high under pressure
That repetition is what holds organisations together when scale increases.
Final thought
External recognition is useful, but it is not the point.
For us, being named again in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work list is simply a signal that our internal systems, operational structure and ways of working are still doing their job while the business scales.
The real test for any organisation is not whether it can define its culture. It is whether it can keep it working when everything else is changing.