Joy Lewis is the Founder and CEO of AAI - Adopt An Intern. With her team, she's helped hundreds of people: more than 1450+ paid internships in 900+ businesses cross-sector since 2010. Today, she shares her thoughts on workplace culture.

This year’s Startup Summit focuses on the importance of workplace culture and it’s very refreshing and timely to see this discussed in such an open forum. With delegates from every sector and a global audience online, this is a unique opportunity to share insights and have a frank discussion on how to make our work lives more inclusive, more diverse, and frankly, more enjoyable.

Broadly, ‘culture’ is simply ‘how things are’ in a business. It is built by the collaborative actions, behaviours and values of the people who started the company, those working there now, and their customers. This culture influences employee attitudes and behaviour in their day-today work - how they talk to colleagues, how they present themselves to new contacts, and perhaps most importantly, how they feel waking up on a Monday morning.

So why is this something we need to discuss? The reality of the gap between daily operations, and how we want our companies to be seen, internally and externally, is often sobering. Hiring an agency to craft your company’s brand identity for the outside world is one thing, but ‘internal marketing’ is another thing altogether and just as important.

Dress-down Fridays or picking up a cake from ASDA for someone’s birthday are not enough to attract the new generation of employees who crave flexibility, purpose and the feeling of having made an impact.

Joy Lewis will be on stage at Startup Summit, along with some other impressive speakers. There is a limited amount of Early Bird tickets available, be sure to grab yours today!