In the research sector, as in many others, company culture is feeling the pressure thanks to a cacophony of challenges including geopolitical uncertainty, financial insecurity, the adoption of AI and squeezed budgets.

Businesses are moving from building cultures to crisis management – but leaders need to build culture with intention because culture is not a nice-to-have but a growth strategy, according to leadership coach Rachael Fraser.

Speaking during a presentation at the MRS Leaders Forum on Thursday 11th September, Fraser said: “There’s a reactive leadership culture where you're firefighting things as they appear – if someone has burnout, you give them support – but you've got a team where there’s a lack of engagement and you're fighting things as they come along.

“Upstream leadership is more proactive. It’s about nourishing the soil rather than pulling the weeds.”

Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce 2025 report found that global employee engagement declined to 21% in 2024, with managers seeing the largest drop – and fewer than half ( 44%) of managers surveyed for the report said they had received management training.

Fraser said: “Managers are critical to success. They are disengaged – they've gone from ‘quiet quitting’ to ‘quiet cracking’ – not enjoying it but not doing anything about it because of financial instability.”

To support managers, businesses should review what support they currently have in-house – for example, tools, a managers’ hub, resources and guidelines.

Coaching, either one-to-one or as a peer group, can help managers to build confidence and self-awareness and to develop upstream leadership skills, said Fraser, adding: “The minute you become a manager, it becomes very solitary. When you bring people together, they share.”

Lastly, she recommended practical, scenario-based training for managers on topics including giving good feedback, building relationships with clients, communication and P&L.

Fraser also described culture as the ‘shared meaning’ people experience when they interact with a business, saying that it is not about but perks, but rather comes down to a combination of challenge (feeling you are going to fulfil your potential), contribution (understanding what your work does for the business) and community (having an intentional portfolio of ways of bringing people together – not just after-work drinks).

• The event was the third in the MRS Leaders Forum series, a network for agency leaders in market research. 
• At the first event in February 2025, agency leaders learned about strategies for achieving financial growth and how to embed innovation, while at the second, leaders heard that they must work harder to engage clients, promote themselves and define their value.