Greetings
Who greets who, when & where
The way people greet each other sets the tone for everything that follows in a working day.
Greetings are small, but they are among the most repeated social acts in any workplace. Whether you say good morning to everyone or only to your team, whether you acknowledge a colleague passing in the corridor or not, whether seniority shapes who greets whom: these micro-behaviors are never neutral. They carry information about who belongs, who is seen, and how formal or warm the culture expects people to be.
Greeting norms often operate just below the level of conscious awareness. New employees absorb them by observation, and deviating from them can signal that someone is either not yet embedded or actively outside the group. A senior person who greets everyone by name creates a different cultural signal than one who greets only their direct reports.
It is worth paying attention to whether greetings extend across the whole organization or follow status lines. A culture where the most junior and the most senior people exchange a genuine hello is a different place from one where seniority determines who initiates contact.