A cultural reboot: Inside The Home Depot’s strategy to reframe selling from within

A case study from Ragan’s upcoming employee experience conference.

 Much more than a simple messaging campaign, cultural refreshes help keep the company’s mission and values front and center during times of evolution and change.

At Ragan’s 2025 Employee Experience Conference this August in Disneyland, Christina Cornell, director of internal communications for field associates at The Home Depot, will discuss a case study in which her team ran a messaging refresher on the company’s “Culture of Selling.”

According to Cornell, the process took on far more weight than just an employee-centric awareness campaign.

“This wasn’t just a communications push — it was a company-wide shift affecting many areas of the business,” Cornell said, “From our stores to sales operations to support functions, we built a communication strategy that reflected the goals of our leaders and stakeholders.”

Cornell said that any company looking to implement change within culture should ensure that they’re doing so in a way that’s firmly rooted in what’s already established. This way, communicators can remind employees that the essence of the company remains the same.

“If you want to find success, you need to root your work in your company’s values before you can drive behavior change,” she said.

Internal comms addresses business challenges

The Home Depot needed a campaign to reaffirm the company’s culture, particularly as it applied to the sales function. Cornell told Ragan that The Home Depot wanted to remind employees, no matter their role, that selling is much more than just ringing up items at the register — it’s an integral part of the company’s identity and needs to be openly talked about.

“This meant reframing rather than completely rebuilding our customer service model, and it’s the internal comms team’s responsibility to communicate that with our associates, no matter what their specific job is,” Cornell said. “We worked on this reframe through storytelling in internal comms posts and messaging initiatives aimed at our employees. This outreach, combined with recognition of individuals and teams of our associates, helped generate positive energy during the campaign.”

Getting leaders involved to overcome friction

Cornell added that company leadership has a major role to play in any cultural refresh. She told Ragan that internal communicators should work with leadership to help narrow down what challenges need to be overcome.

“Before jumping into messaging and tactics, strong communications leaders take the time to ask what’s really going on behind the scenes,” she said. “What may look like a single business challenge could be an interconnected web of behavioral, cultural and operational challenges.”

Cornell also said that her team performed an internal comms audit and was somewhat surprised by

“During the Culture of Selling messaging campaign, what initially seemed like a need for better customer service scores turned out to be about understanding selling behaviors, effective training, inconsistent recognition, and clarity of priorities,” Cornell said.

“By unpacking the problem with curiosity and asking deeper questions, we were able to design communications that addressed several issues and not just the symptoms on the surface. As communicators, it was our job to help our leaders connect the dots between what challenges were at hand and be a constant source of information on the Culture of Selling for our employees.”

The right message isn’t always the grand one

Cornell told Ragan that during the refresh campaign, one consistent reminder her team got was that even seemingly small pushes towards a more aligned culture helped a great deal.

“The success we’ve seen in this push is a testament to a clear, repeatable message,” she said. The most effective messages often start small. They’re introduced in a meeting, echoed in a leader’s conversation and then reinforced in team groups.”

Cornell added that repetition of this cultural messaging calls what she calls “surround sound,” in which a message is easily repeatable and reflected in all corners of the company.

“That’s how you drive lasting cultural shifts,” she said. “It’s not done by saying everything at once, but by saying the right thing consistently.”

To check out Cornell’s case study in person, register for our Employee Experience Conference.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.

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