On the AllVoices Reimagining Company Culture podcast, we sat down with Sandy Cross, Chief People Officer at PGA of America, to dig into building a purpose-driven culture. Sandy Cross has built a solid reputation of developing, engaging, and leading a company’s greatest assets – its people – to create valuable, meaningful, and purpose-driven change. She cultivates inclusive cultures that challenge the status quo and move businesses forward.
The conversation moves past the usual talking points. Instead of treating purpose-driven work as an HR theme, Sandy Cross treats it as an operational discipline that sits in the daily decisions managers make about people, priorities, and trust. Below, the takeaways HR leaders, employee relations specialists, and executive teams will find most useful.
The discussion below pulls on several threads from the episode and connects them to current research and what AllVoices sees across hundreds of People teams.
What Purpose-Driven Work Looks Like in Practice
Purpose-Driven Work is one of those words HR teams use freely, but the on-the-ground version is much messier. In the conversation with Sandy Cross, several patterns showed up that mirror what Gallup analysis of purpose at work also highlights about effective people work. The gap between the slide-deck version and the daily practice is where most programs fall apart.
The data backs the case. Gallup engagement findings on US workforce shows that organizations treating purpose-driven work as a real discipline outperform peers on engagement, retention, and the cultural metrics that matter most over a multi-year horizon. Companies that treat it as messaging see short-term lift and long-term decline.
For HR leaders building Company Culture programs, that means starting with the everyday touchpoints where purpose-driven work either lands or fails: hiring loops, onboarding, manager 1:1s, and performance conversations. These are the places where intention turns into experience, and where employees decide whether they trust the company enough to stay, speak up, and do their best work.
The pattern across high-functioning HR teams is consistent. They write fewer policies, run more pilots, and spend more time in conversation with managers who are actually doing the work. That discipline is harder than rolling out a campaign, but it is the difference between purpose-driven work as a phrase and purpose-driven work as a result.
How HR Teams Make Purpose-Driven Work Operational
The shift from concept to operation is where most teams stall. Two questions usually surface in workshops with People leaders.
Where should purpose-driven work live in the org?
Ownership matters. Programs that sit only with HR rarely get traction. The strongest organizations pair central ownership in HR with distributed accountability across people managers, with a feedback loop into leadership. Employee Engagement can help build the capacity to run that distributed model without losing visibility, and gives the People team a single place to track what is actually happening.
What does success look like in 12 months?
Most teams need a one-year mark with concrete outcomes: a measurable change in employee engagement scores, a defined set of policy and process changes, and named owners for the work. Without that, the program drifts and budget questions become harder to defend. The honest version of a 12-month plan also includes two or three things you tried and decided not to repeat.
What Actually Works When You Lead Purpose-Driven Work
Three patterns repeat across People teams that get this work right. The principles cut across industry and company size.
Make the why specific
Generic purpose statements get ignored. Tie purpose to a concrete population the company serves and a measurable outcome.
Translate purpose to the day-to-day
Most employees experience purpose in the small: the project they own, the customer they help, the colleague they support.
Audit the gap between stated and lived purpose
If your values say one thing and your promotions say another, employees notice immediately.
These three principles also depend on the underlying culture. Without a baseline of values statement, most operational changes get rejected by the organization's immune system. Build the foundation first.
Where Employee Relations Fits Into Purpose-Driven Work
Whatever the topic, employee relations sits underneath. Purpose-Driven Work programs that ignore the ER reality get blindsided by a case that should have been resolved early. AllVoices builds investigations management and HR case management so HR teams can connect the surface-level work on purpose-driven work to the deeper work of resolving issues, tracking patterns, and acting on what employees raise. The two are tightly linked: when employees see issues handled fairly, they trust the rest of the work too.
How ER data informs Purpose-Driven Work strategy
Issue patterns, response times, and resolution outcomes give HR a clearer picture than survey data alone. When the ER data is integrated into Human Resources workflows, leaders can see how purpose-driven work translates into the lived experience of employees who raise concerns, and what to do about it. The teams that move fastest tend to review case themes monthly and feed those insights into the broader people strategy, instead of treating ER as a separate, reactive function.
For a real example, see Sweetgreen's frontline approach. The same pattern applies: connect the strategic intent of purpose-driven work to the operational rhythm where ER, HR, and managers actually meet employees.
Frequently Asked Questions About Purpose-Driven Work
What does purpose-driven work mean?
Purpose-driven work is work that connects an employee's daily effort to a clear, meaningful outcome the organization is trying to create. It is not the same as a tagline or mission statement.
How does purpose affect engagement?
Gallup's research consistently shows that employees who strongly connect their work to a meaningful purpose are far more engaged, more likely to stay, and more productive than those who don't.
How do you measure purpose at work?
Use focused survey items like "I see how my work connects to the company's mission" and "My job has a purpose I personally believe in." Track changes by team and tenure.
Can purpose backfire?
Yes. Purpose-washing, where stated values don't match daily decisions, breeds cynicism. Employees would rather have a transactional employer than a hypocritical one.
What's the manager's role in purpose?
Managers translate company purpose into team purpose. The best ones connect every project, every goal, every difficult conversation back to a why that the team actually believes.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Purpose-Driven Work is not a posture. It's a set of decisions, repeated over time, by people who control budgets, promotions, calendars, and the daily experience of work. The HR leaders who get traction stop treating this as a campaign and start treating it as ongoing operational practice. That reframing matters because it changes how you measure success and where you put your energy week to week.
That shift requires data, follow-through, and a clear point of view. Gallup analysis of purpose at work and the broader research community make the business case clearer every year. The companies that act on it consistently win on retention, culture, and outcomes that show up on the financial statement. The ones that keep treating the work as branding tend to lose ground quietly, then noisily.
The conversation with Sandy Cross is a useful reminder that the work is doable. None of it requires a huge HR team or a massive budget. It requires clear thinking, consistent execution, and the willingness to adjust when the data tells you to. Pair that mindset with the right tooling and the right partners, and purpose-driven work stops being aspirational and becomes a measurable part of how the business runs.
Want to see how AllVoices supports HR teams running this work? Book a demo.
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