How to build an uncorporate company culture

Most business leaders say they have a great culture – but their employees often don’t feel the same. In fact, around three quarters (77%) of UK employees felt disengaged at work last year, according to research by Gallup.

So, how do you turn that around? (Clue: it’s not about bean bags, table tennis tables or free gym memberships.)

Last month, Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, and Bruce Daisley, Sunday Times bestselling author, presenter and culture coach, shared their advice on how to build an “uncorporate” culture: a workplace your employees actually want to be part of.

This was just one of the inspiring talks that took place at our latest Octopus EV Drive Day, an exclusive event for business leaders at the forefront of driving change and innovation, featuring top guest speakers and Octopus Energy leaders – and an exclusive look at EVs that haven’t launched in the UK yet.

Here are his top five tips for building an “uncorporate” company culture.

Greg thinks far too many companies underestimate their people. “Outside of work, people are solving the hardest problems of modern life: the cost of living, the impact of social media on their kids,” he said. “And then they come to work, and we infantilise them. We expect them to follow a series of very prescriptive rules and policies.”

The starting point for any good culture is trust. People have to be empowered to make decisions, solve problems, and do the right thing without being buried in processes.

“We take out as many rules and policies as we can and replace them with a really clear objective,” explained Greg. That objective is simple: deliver brilliant experiences for customers while making the energy transition cheaper and faster.

That means no micro-approvals or gatekeeping. If a customer’s been let down, the person on the call can fix it then and there. As Greg put it, “If you need to give someone a £30 credit because we’ve messed up, you don’t need to go and ask for permission.”

When you give people more control, it improves their experience because it makes them feel like they matter. “What differentiates the best cultures from their competitors is a strong sense of autonomy,” said Bruce. “The ability to make decisions and get things done.”

When a company starts small, culture often builds itself. Everyone knows each other. Feedback is instant. But growth puts that at risk, unless you actively keep people connected.

For Octopus, it all started with Friday night pints. “It helped us decompress,” Greg said. “We realised, it's not ‘those idiots in finance are getting in the way’ or ‘those fools in marketing don't pay attention to operations’. We're all trying to achieve the same thing. And the more we discussed it, the stronger we became.”

That early ritual evolved into something bigger: a weekly all-hands meeting known as our “family dinner.” Thousands of employees from around the world dial in to hear stories from the week, share wins and challenges, and stay close to the company’s mission.

“It's not manicured, it's fairly chaotic, but it enables me and our leaders to share stories of the things that have gone on during the week,” said Greg.

That sense of a shared rhythm helps keep company cultures alive, even when teams are distributed and growing fast. And for Bruce, the beat has to be set from the top. “People often say to me, ‘People don’t turn up to our social events any more.’ And I ask them, ‘Do you turn up to your social events?’ And often, they don’t,” he explains. “When culture works well, it’s when people feel part of something, rather than like a spectator.”

As companies grow, the pressure to “professionalise” can be intense. It can be tempting to add more structure or bring in more processes. Greg’s advice is simple: don’t do it.

“Every time I believed that what got us here wouldn’t get us there, things got worse,” he said. “Relentlessly, I’ve thought: if something’s working, do more of it.”

That mindset shaped how we handled two of the biggest energy acquisitions in the UK: Bulb and Shell Energy Retail. Together, they brought over 3 million new customers, and thousands of employees, into the business.

Instead of designing a new way of doing things, we doubled down on our own. “We said: you’re joining Octopus, and we’ll do it the Octopus way,” Greg said. “We would love to embrace you and your talents as part of this, but we're not going to change how we operate.”

And it worked: 93% of Bulb’s team chose to stay. Many have since taken on senior roles across the group. It goes to show that you don’t have to dilute what’s made you successful as you grow; actually, you should be making it stronger.

In our early days, the plan was simple: build something lean, fast and automated. No phone calls, no frills, just efficiency. “Our initial plan was to build the Ryanair for energy,” recalls Greg. “We’d be unbelievably cheap, because we were brutally operationally efficient.”

Then one of the company’s first investors offered a different perspective: what if you actually loved your customers?

That changed everything. From day one, we decided to remove the corporate wall between the company and our customers. No “no-reply” email addresses. When customers write in, a person replies. If they’re having an issue with our website, they speak directly to our developers.

“We don’t treat calls as something we need to avoid,” Greg said. “They’re an opportunity to talk to our customers, to listen, and to show them that we care.”

With hundreds of thousands of customer conversations every week, we’re constantly getting real, unfiltered feedback – which means we’ve never had to run a focus group. “If we don’t know what our customers are thinking,” Greg said, “then we’re not doing our job.”

That approach has created something rare in the energy sector: loyalty. Greg recalls a recent mailing that invited customers to a company event: within hours, more than 300,000 people had said they’d be interested in attending.

From the beginning, Octopus wasn’t designed to become a corporate machine. It was built to stay fast, flat and focused, without layers of hierarchy or inflated job titles. Just a clear mission and the freedom to get on with it.

This is the fifth business Greg’s built, and he hopes it’ll be his last. “If we ever became bureaucratic or stopped doing what we set out to do, I’d leave,” he said.

It’s a company for people who want to do meaningful work without jumping through hoops. That kind of culture can’t be captured in a set of values. It’s shaped by how people show up, how they make decisions, and how they treat each other every day.

As Greg puts it: “This is the only kind of place I could put up with working in.”

What comes through in everything Greg shared is that culture doesn’t live in policies, mission statements or slide decks. It’s in the way people act and treat each other.

That’s why we’ve kept things simple and focused on what matters: trusting our people, listening to our customers, and refusing to let bureaucracy get in the way of doing the right thing. It’s not always tidy. It’s not perfect. But it works, because it’s real.

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If you’re looking to boost your company culture, why not try an EV salary sacrifice scheme? It’s a benefit that over three-quarters of employees want, and it’s a great (and totally free) way to attract and retain top talent.

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