Curiovation Labor Lab

Culture Is a System. We Measure It—Then Fix It.

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Curiovation Labor Lab helps organizations understand how culture actually works inside their company—and how to change it in ways that improve trust, motivation, retention, and performance. We apply labor economics and behavioral science to diagnose the systems shaping everyday work. Instead of focusing on perks, programs, or abstract engagement scores, we help leaders see what employees experience in practice: how incentives operate, where trust erodes, and why motivation rises or falls.

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When culture is treated as a system—not a slogan—organizations gain clarity, control, and measurable results.

Request a Culture Diagnostic

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The Problem Most Organizations Can’t See

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Most workplaces don’t fail because people don’t care. They fail because the design of work quietly undermines effort.

Employees start with good intentions. Over time, unclear expectations, misaligned incentives, and low trust make meaningful work harder to sustain. Leaders respond with meetings, wellness initiatives, or motivational messaging, but the day-to-day experience of work remains unchanged.

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Disengagement spreads quietly. Performance becomes uneven. Turnover rises. Managers feel stuck addressing symptoms instead of causes. Culture doesn’t break loudly. It degrades through small, cumulative signals—and without the right tools, organizations struggle to see where the breakdown begins.

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What Curiovation Labor Lab Does Differently

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At Curiovation Labor Lab, we treat culture as a behavioral system that can be measured, analyzed, and redesigned.

Our work focuses on the conditions that shape how people behave at work: trust, autonomy, motivation, and alignment between stated values and actual incentives. Using research-backed surveys and economic frameworks, we help organizations understand not just how employees feel, but why those feelings emerge and what sustains them.

This approach allows leaders to move beyond intuition and address culture at its roots—without relying on trends or trial-and-error programs.

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The Culture Intelligence Audit™

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The Culture Intelligence Audit™ is our signature diagnostic tool for organizations that want clarity instead of guesswork.

The audit is designed to reveal how employees experience work across key behavioral dimensions, including trust, autonomy, motivation, and incentive alignment. Rather than producing a generic engagement score, it identifies where cultural friction exists, how leadership signals are interpreted, and which systems unintentionally discourage effort or commitment.

Leaders receive a clear, executive-level interpretation of the findings, along with focused recommendations that translate insight into action. The goal is not to overwhelm teams with data, but to provide direction—where to intervene, what to adjust, and what will make the biggest difference.

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The result is a shared understanding of culture that leaders can actually use.

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Schedule a Culture Audit Conversation

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Why Traditional Engagement Efforts Fall Short

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Most engagement initiatives fail because they focus on surface outcomes rather than underlying mechanisms.

Surveys measure sentiment, but not causation. Wellness programs address stress, but not the structures creating it. Training and motivation efforts often fade because they don’t change how work is designed or rewarded.

Culture improves when organizations understand the signals they send every day—through policies, incentives, management behaviors, and decision-making norms. When those signals align with trust and purpose, motivation follows naturally.

This is where behavioral economics matters. People respond to systems, not intentions.

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Built on Research. Designed for Real Organizations.

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Curiovation Labor Lab bridges academic research and real-world business practice.

Our methods draw from labor economics, organizational psychology, and behavioral science, but they are designed for practical application. We work with leaders and HR teams who need solutions that fit operational realities—not abstract theories or one-size-fits-all frameworks.

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Whether an organization is growing, struggling with retention, or simply seeking a clearer understanding of its culture, our work provides a grounded, evidence-based path forward.

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Founded by a Labor Economist

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Curiovation Labor Lab was founded by Dr. Rebecca Johannsen, a labor economist and professor specializing in organizational culture, motivation, and productivity.

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After years of researching how incentives, trust, and autonomy shape workplace behavior, Dr. Johannsen created Curiovation to bring scientific rigor into culture work—an area often dominated by intuition and trends.

Her work focuses on helping organizations understand how people actually experience work, and how small changes in design can produce lasting improvements in engagement, performance, and retention.

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Culture You Can Measure. Change You Can See.

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Organizations thrive when people experience purpose, autonomy, and trust at work. Those conditions don’t happen by accident—they are designed.

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Curiovation Labor Lab helps organizations move from assumptions to insight, and from insight to meaningful change.

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Request a Culture Diagnostic