Building belonging: The system that powers distributed teams

How leaders can design belonging through intention, rhythm, and space

📆 4 December, 13:30–14:15 CET

📌 Webinar with presentation + Q&A

Belonging is a system, not a feeling. How can leaders design belonging as infrastructure - through space, rhythm, and lived practice?

Your team chats constantly on Slack but barely knows each other. Engagement scores drop despite competitive benefits. Talented people leave for “culture fit” elsewhere. Meanwhile, everyone defines flexibility differently - parents need school pick-ups, others want deep-focus remote work, some crave office energy - making “one culture” feel impossible.

This isn’t only an HR challenge. Companies with falling engagement see 40 % higher turnover, 56 % lower performance, and massive hidden costs from disengagement and quiet quitting - estimated at $450 billion annually in lost productivity.

Join Andrea Strohmayr (Culture By Design) and Space Refinery to explore why traditional engagement strategies fail in today’s distributed reality - and how clarity, culture, and space can turn belonging into a tangible growth driver.

In this session, part of our webinar series Ahead of the Curve, you’ll learn why some organisations thrive in flexible setups while others struggle, even with the same tools and policies. We’ll unpack the systematic nature of belonging - how small daily decisions compound into either connection or isolation - and how leaders can design rhythms, rituals, and environments that make belonging a lived experience.

What you’ll learn

1. Clarity before connection - How understanding who you are as a company, what you believe about good work, and the role you want to play in your people’s lives sets the foundation for culture design.
2. Belonging by design - How flexibility without clarity breeds resentment, and how to define the why behind your hybrid or remote setup so people use freedom as intended.
3. Rhythms and rituals that stick - Why predictability and shared moments (weekly, monthly, quarterly) are the strongest levers for belonging - and how to co-design them so they reflect your DNA.
4. Spaces that enable culture - How physical and virtual environments become strategic tools to reinforce your values and everyday connections.

Key insights

• Culture follows clarity. Your beliefs about what “good work” looks like must precede any policy, layout, or tool.
• Belonging isn’t built by perks - it’s built by predictable rhythms. Teams thrive when rituals anchor connection and reduce cognitive load.
• Flexibility needs a shared purpose. When everyone understands why flexibility exists, it strengthens trust instead of eroding it.
• Space is strategy. The environments where people gather - digital or physical - can either fragment or amplify culture.
• The earlier you design for belonging, the fewer crises you’ll meet later. Early clarity prevents the disconnection that surfaces only in exit interviews.

Andrea Strohmayr is the founder of Culture by Design, helping distributed and hybrid-first organisations translate culture into lived experience, rhythm, and space. Blending organisational culture, neuroscience, and human-centred design, she enables leaders to turn belonging into a system that fuels connection and performance.

Why it matters

• Gallup (2025): Companies with engaged employees show +18 % productivity, +23 % profitability, –21 % turnover.
• i4cp: Improving collaboration can raise productivity 39 % and profitability 54 %.
• Gensler Global Workplace Survey (2025): Employees in “great workplaces” are 3× more likely to stay, feel belonging, and recommend their company.
• IWG (2024): 88 % of employees now expect hybrid working as a default benefit.
• Microsoft Work Trend Index: 85 % value rebuilding bonds in person; 84 % return to the office primarily to socialise.

Join us to discover how belonging, clarity, and culture design translate into measurable engagement and business performance - and why your next strategic advantage might start with the rhythms your team keeps.