Evolve Framework: How to Create Company Culture that Works
Happier Teams Make Healthier Companies
“Company Culture” has achieved buzzword status in recent years but for many organizations it hasn’t gotten any farther than that. You know you are supposed to support employees, but how do you actually do that? And how do you do it in a meaningful way that goes beyond performative action?
My name is Ashley Riehle and I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW, LCSW-C), trauma therapist, and qualitative researcher with over a decade of experience helping individuals and organizations navigate complex emotional and systemic challenges.
I help companies turn vague wellness intentions into data-driven action.
I started my career as a therapist, supporting individuals through trauma, burnout, and life transitions. Over time, I noticed a pattern: many of my clients weren’t struggling in isolation. They were reacting to toxic or misaligned workplace environments that were eroding their sense of self and well-being. As a licensed clinical social worker and qualitative researcher, I became increasingly interested in the systems people were embedded in, especially the cultures of the organizations they worked for. Consulting became a natural extension of my work. It allowed me to shift from healing individuals one at a time to helping reshape the environments that contribute to their stress in the first place.
My work sits at the intersection of mental health, organizational dynamics, and human behavior. Whether I’m conducting interviews with employees or advising leadership on how to build psychological safety, my goal is always the same: to create healthier and more sustainable spaces.
What does this look like?
I take a human-centered, systems-informed, trauma-aware approach.
This means looking beyond surface-level symptoms like burnout or disengagement and ask: What’s actually driving this?
I once worked with a small startup that prided itself on its "fun and fast-paced" culture. Weekly happy hours, ping-pong in the office, a well-stocked snack room, and lively Slack channel full of lighthearted banter. At first glance you’d think this place was the pinnacle of employee wellness.
But during our assessment phase, something different emerged. In anonymous surveys and one-on-one interviews, employees admitted they felt they had to show up to every social event, even when exhausted. They described a culture of unspoken pressure: if you weren’t laughing and upbeat, you were in danger of being deemed “not a good fit." One employee said, "Sure it’s fun but then you realize you're burned out and can’t tell anyone because you’re supposed to be the 'culture champion.'”
The constant cheerfulness was only a thin facade and made it hard for people to speak honestly about their limits.
For this company, the solution was not to remove the snacks or ban memes on slack, but to normalize honest communication over toxic positivity. Once the team learned that it was ok and even beneficial to communicate with more candor, there was a palpable shift. The “fun” culture persisted, but lost its frantic, performative nature.
Employees don’t operate in a vacuum, they’re responding to communication norms, power structures, and unspoken expectations. By bringing curiosity, care, and structure to this exploration, we’re able to make targeted and meaningful shifts.
Evolve Framework Process Overview
The Evolve framework is straightforward but powerful:
Explore – Begin by exploring your workplace culture through surveys, interviews, and qualitative observation.
Visualize – Synthesize findings into clear, visual insights that help your team see what's really happening.
Orient – Align with leadership and teams on priorities, values, and readiness for change.
Learn – Deliver custom workshops and coaching to build skills, emotional intelligence, and trauma-informed leadership.
Value – Instill practices that reinforce psychological safety, communication, and well-being.
Embed – Provide continued support and feedback as your culture evolves to integrate the changes and help make them permanent
Results & Impact
We’re outcomes-driven. Here are a few examples of what the Evolve Framework does for teams like yours:
Helped a mission-driven tech startup reduce employee burnout risk by 23% through improved communication and work-life balance practices.
Designed a well-being assessment for a nonprofit team that uncovered key blind spots in leadership engagement and led to a 25% increase in reported measures of psychological safety over three months.
Coached senior leaders at a values-based company to adopt trauma-informed leadership strategies, resulting in improved team cohesion and a drop in interpersonal conflict reports.
Let’s Get Started
If you're ready to move beyond surface-level solutions and start building a culture that truly supports your people, book a free consultation here.
Let’s turn your values into action, and create some measurable impact.
Join Our Upcoming Webinar
Learn more about building a supportive workplace culture by joining our webinar: Psychological Safety: The KPI You’re Not Tracking (But Should Be). In this session, we'll explore how psychological safety is a key performance indicator for a healthy and productive team. Reserve your spot here.
