what are the culture presentation

Culture strategy presentation: A comprehensive guide

This guide covers everything from defining your culture to creating a plan for implementation.

Raja Bothra

Building presentations

Welcome to the ultimate guide on creating a culture strategy presentation that will captivate your audience, align your team, and drive organizational success.

This guide will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to craft a compelling culture strategy presentation that resonates with your audience and leaves a lasting impression.

What is culture and strategy?

Before we dive into the intricacies of crafting a culture strategy presentation, let's define our key terms: culture and strategy .

Culture refers to the collective values, beliefs, behaviors, and norms that define an organization. It's the invisible thread that weaves through every aspect of your company, shaping its identity and guiding its decisions.

Strategy , on the other hand, is the deliberate plan of action designed to achieve specific goals and objectives. It's the roadmap that ensures your organization moves in the right direction, adapting to change while staying true to its mission.

In today's business world, these two concepts are deeply intertwined. An effective culture strategy presentation is the bridge that connects them, helping your team understand how the company's culture supports its strategic goals.

Importance of culture strategy presentation

Aligning your team.

One of the primary purposes of a culture strategy presentation is to align your team. When everyone in the organization understands and embraces the culture, it becomes a driving force behind decision-making and actions. This alignment fosters a sense of unity, cohesion, and shared purpose, essential for achieving your strategic objectives.

Attracting top talent

An exceptional company culture is a magnet for top talent. Talented individuals are not just looking for a job; they seek an environment where they can thrive, grow, and contribute meaningfully. Your culture strategy presentation can highlight what sets your organization apart and why it's an attractive place to work.

Driving productivity

A well-defined culture strategy can lead to increased productivity. When employees are clear about the values and expectations, they make decisions aligned with the company's goals. This clarity reduces ambiguity and empowers team members to work more efficiently and effectively.

How to structure an effective culture strategy presentation

Creating a culture strategy presentation involves careful planning and thoughtful execution. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to structure your presentation:

1. Start with a powerful introduction: Begin your presentation with a captivating story or a surprising fact related to your company's culture. This will instantly grab your audience's attention. For example, "Did you know that companies with a strong culture outperform their peers by 20%?"

2. Define your presentation goals: Clearly state the objectives of your presentation. What do you want your audience to learn or take away from it? Make sure your goals are aligned with your organization's overall strategy.

3. Use visual slides: Incorporate visual elements into your presentation to enhance comprehension and engagement. Utilize Prezent, PowerPoint or Google Slides to create visually appealing slide templates that convey your message effectively.

4. Emphasize company culture: Dedicate a section to explain your organization's company culture. Share real-life stories and examples of how it has positively impacted the workplace.

5. Highlight organizational values: Discuss the core values that guide your organization. Explain how these values are embedded in your decision-making processes and daily operations.

6. Address employee engagement: Discuss the importance of employees in shaping and sustaining your culture. Showcase how your culture empowers and motivates team members.

7. Present data and metrics: Back your claims with data and metrics. Show how your culture strategy has led to tangible results, such as improved productivity or a decrease in employee attrition rate.

8. Provide solutions: Offer practical ways to improve and maintain your culture. Share strategies for embedding values in your organization and streamlining decision-making processes.

9. Engage your audience: Encourage interaction by asking questions, conducting polls, or including teamwork activities within your presentation.

10. End with a strong conclusion: Summarize the key points, reiterate the importance of your culture strategy, and leave your audience with a memorable closing statement.

Do’s and don'ts on a culture strategy presentation

Now that you know how to structure your presentation, let's explore some do's and don'ts to ensure your culture strategy presentation is a resounding success.

• Do keep it concise: Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive information. Stick to the most relevant and impactful details.
• Do use visuals: Incorporate graphics and visuals to make your presentation more engaging.
• Do tell stories: Share real-life anecdotes and success stories to illustrate the impact of your culture strategy.
• Do encourage questions: Foster an open and inclusive environment where your audience feels comfortable asking questions.
• Do showcase results: Highlight the positive outcomes of your culture strategy, such as increased productivity or improved decision-making.

Don'ts:

• Don't overload with jargon: Avoid using too much industry-specific terminology. Ensure your presentation is accessible to a broader audience.
• Don't neglect employee input: Don't forget to incorporate feedback from your employees when discussing culture.
• Don't rush through it: Take your time during the presentation. Rushing through the material can lead to confusion.
• Don't Ignore the importance of visuals: Visual aids should complement your presentation, not replace it. Balance is key.
• Don't skip the Q&A: Allow time for questions and discussion at the end. This promotes engagement and clarifies any doubts.

Summarizing key takeaways

In this comprehensive guide, we've explored the intricacies of creating a culture strategy presentation that not only captivates your audience but also aligns your team and drives organizational success. Remember to:

• Start with a powerful introduction.
• Define your presentation goals.
• Use visual slides effectively.
• Highlight your company culture and values.
• Back your claims with data and metrics.
• Provide practical solutions for maintaining your culture.
• Engage your audience throughout the presentation.

By following these guidelines and avoiding common pitfalls, you can create a culture strategy presentation that leaves a lasting impact and helps your organization thrive.

1. What is the significance of a culture strategy presentation?

A culture strategy presentation plays a vital role in shaping corporate culture and driving organizational success. It's a powerful tool for articulating your company's values and embedding them in your work environment. By using culture ppt templates and ppt slides, you can effectively convey your message to your audience, making it easier for them to better understand your company's culture and strategy. This presentation serves as a guide to align your team, attract talented people, and create a top-down approach where everyone has buy-in.

2. How can I create an effective culture strategy powerpoint presentation?

To create an impactful culture strategy powerpoint (culture powerpoint) presentation, start by using culture powerpoint presentation slides and corporate culture powerpoint presentation slides. These resources provide a visual framework for your presentation. You can download predesigned templates and slide decks, wherein you can map out methods to embed your company's values effectively. Use presentation graphics to make your slides visually appealing. Make sure to be concise in your content and articulate the importance of your culture in the organization's success.

3. What role does HR play in crafting a culture strategy presentation?

HR manager, as a key stakeholder, plays a crucial role in developing and maintaining the company's culture. They can use their expertise to create a culture strategy powerpoint (culture strategy ppt) that addresses issues like employee turnover and increase in employee attrition rate, which can otherwise lead to slow decision-making. HR professionals can educate fellow employees on the culture and workforce expectations through the presentation. They can also update the content regularly to reflect the evolving culture.

4. Can you provide an example of a culture strategy presentation?

Certainly! Here's an example of a culture strategy presentation:

Title: "Nurturing a Culture of Excellence"

• Slide 1: Introduction
• Slide 2: Defining Our Culture
• Slide 3: Our Core Values
• Slide 4: Embedding Values in Our Organization
• Slide 5: Employee Engagement
• Slide 6: Measuring Success (with relevant metrics)
• Slide 7: Practical Solutions
• Slide 8: Interactive Team Activity
• Slide 9: Q&A
• Slide 10: Conclusion

This presentation effectively uses powerpoint templates to maintain a consistent visual style, font, and it employs business slides to illustrate key points. It's a prime example of an amazing presentation that aligns with the organization's culture and strategy.

5. How can a culture strategy presentation benefit my organization in the external market?

A well-crafted culture strategy presentation can have a significant impact on how your organization is perceived in the external market. It can help attract the best talent by showcasing your company's unique culture and values. Furthermore, by effectively communicating your culture through presentation slides, you can gain a competitive edge. An engaging presentation can also enhance your communication process with external stakeholders and potential partners. It's a valuable tool to educate the market about your company's culture and create a positive image.

Create your culture strategy presentation with prezent

Prezent can be a valuable tool for creating your culture strategy presentation. With its AI-powered features and extensive resources, here's how Prezent can assist you:

• Audience-centric content : Prezent helps you tailor your presentation to your audience's preferences, making it more engaging and impactful.
• Brand consistency : Access brand-approved designs to ensure your presentation aligns with your company's visual identity.
• Time efficiency : Save time with AI-driven content suggestions and templates, allowing you to create presentations faster.
• Real-time collaboration : Collaborate seamlessly with team members and gather input in real-time for a more polished presentation.
• Cost savings : Reduce communication costs by up to 60% by streamlining the presentation creation and sharing process with Prezent.

In summary, Prezent offers a comprehensive set of tools and features to help you create a compelling culture strategy presentation.

Ready to create your culture strategy presentation? Try our free trial or book a demo today with Prezent!

Happy presenting!

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WHAT IS CULTURE?

Mar 19, 2012

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WHAT IS CULTURE?. CULTURE. is a key concept in anthropology. The term is now widely adopted by other social sciences and humanities. Despite its common usage in everyday reference the term “culture” as employed in anthropology does have a more specific meaning. CULTURE.

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Presentation Transcript

CULTURE is a key concept in anthropology. The term is now widely adopted by other social sciences and humanities. Despite its common usage in everyday reference the term “culture” as employed in anthropology does have a more specific meaning.

CULTURE has been defined in various ways but most anthropologists would agree on the following definition:

CULTURE is the customary behavior, beliefs, values and ideals that are passed on through the generations among members of a social group. Culture can be thought of as the total life way of a group encompassing its symbolic beliefs.

The key ideas within the concept of culture are:

1) that culture is shared among a group.

2) that culture is learned by members of a social group not genetically inherited. The process of learning one’s culture is termed “enculturation”.

3) that culture is integrated, i.e. change in one aspect of a culture can bring change to other parts.

4) that culture is adaptive, its ways changing in response to new circumstances and new influences. Within any culture there is more or less room for diversity and dissention.

In anthropology we are interested in studying cultural behavior and beliefs, i.e. we are interested in what people do and why they do it; what people say and why they say it.

What we are NOT interested in doing is judging other people’s culture by our own cultural standards.

To judge others’ culture by our own standards would be termed “ethnocentric”.

We define ethnocentrism as the tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and apply one’s own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people from other cultures.

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infoDiagram visual slide examples, PowerPoint diagrams & icons , PPT tricks & guides

How to Illustrate Culture Idea in a Presentation [concept visualization]

Last Updated on January 5, 2021 by Anastasia

Do you need to discuss culture concept? Whether you plan to describe elements of popular culture, the arts, or values we suggest using visual metaphor icons to make your points effectively.

Flat or creative graphics will take your presentations to the next level and will help you create audience-capturing slides. Check out our favorite icons, and choose the style which fits your presentation best.

Use Outline or Modern Graphics Representing a Culture

Outline style icons are light and elegant. Modern style icons are more neutral, but are still professional and sophisticated. Think about which style of culture concept graphics would suit your next presentation context best.

• Use a speaker or instrument to represent the pop culture or popular music.
• Violins, comedy and tragedy masks, books , paintings and shoes can all represent high cultures such as theater, poetry, literature, fashion, and art.
• Building and architecture icons can represent the culture of a particular country or ethnicity.
• Religious symbols can bring to mind religious cultural identities as well as cultural values.
• A handshake or person giving a speech icon can visualize the concept of customs and speech within a culture.

Use Hand-Drawn Culture Concept Graphics

Hand-drawn icons are creative and fun. These icons bring creativity and energy to any culture concept presentation and will help you to be more personal. Not sure how you might present culture as a concept? Let our ideas inspire your next project:

• Music notes and speakers can represent elements of mass culture, popular culture, and the music itself.
• A person with a paintbrush or a museum icon can be used to help your audience visualize art or the arts.
• Icons that show a handshake or a person giving a gift can represent customs within a culture or habits people have.
• Building icons are perfect for visualizing architecture and other culture concepts.

Do you have new ideas for your next culture presentation? We hope so! Use the visual metaphors above to present the culture concepts or think up your own.

Make more impactful presentations when you make culture visual for your audience. With a subscription to InfoDiagram you can download slides from any graphic collection on our website.

Get inspired by other concept blogs

Did our culture concept visual metaphors blog help you? Learn other ways to present difficult topics visually. Visit our Concept Visualization Master List blog page and see what big concepts we can help you share.

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Ten Tips for Presenting to Different Cultures

10 tips on delivering better business presentations to culturally diverse audiences!

Making a Speech to a Culturally Diverse Audience

Presenting to audiences from different cultures can be particularly daunting because there are often diverse characteristics and customs we need to take into account. However, fear of misunderstandings can cause speakers to hold back, which impacts their ability to influence audiences successfully .

Here are some simple tips that will boost your presentation skills and help you speak confidently when presenting to people from different cultures .

• 1. Research the Audience

2. Meet the Audience Before the Speech

3. use some local language.

• 4. Find Local Examples
• 5. Speak Slowly and Clearly  

6. Use Visual Aids

• 7. Use Humour Carefully

8. Get the Audience Involved

9. watch the length of the presentation.

• 10. Evaluate, Review and Continually Improve

1. Research the Audience 

Find out as much as you can about the country and organisation you are presenting to. Internet research, guidebooks, travel magazines and local media will provide valuable insights about different cultures that shape the creation and delivery of your presentation. Bear in mind that this is as much about what to avoid as what to include.

More than likely, you will not know your audience personally, and they will not know you. To establish a personal connection, try to meet as many as possible one-to-one before presenting to them as a group.  

At the start of the presentation, it can also help to engage in some light banter to warm them up. This can make them more receptive to your messages, but perhaps check with your local liaison first to see if this is a suitable approach. 

Impact Factory runs Open Public Speaking Courses Tailored Public Speaking Training and Five-Day Elite Presentation With Impact Workshop s

Identify a few short phrases in the local language that can be used as an icebreaker at the start of the presentation, or to illustrate key points. For example, President John F Kennedy used the phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” to great effect in Germany during one of his speeches. 

4. Find Local Examples 

If you are presenting new ideas or complex concepts to people from different cultures, it can help to convey them using local examples. This not only helps the audience to understand your messages, but also establishes a stronger connection with the audience. 

5. Speak Slowly and Clearly 

English may not be the first language for most of the audience, so speak slowly and clearly using Plain English . Not too slowly though, or you may come across as patronising. Check out our article on cross-cultural communication , which will also help you when presenting to audiences from different cultures.

Photographs, illustrations, graphs and charts can cut through language barriers to ensure your verbal messages are clearly understood. If adding text to visual aids, bear in mind that some of the audience may speak better English than they can read or write. 

7. Use Humour Carefully  

Including humour is a recommended approach when presenting. However, bear in mind that sense of humour varies in different cultures. Stick to universal humour or something that you know is humorous locally, and avoid anything inappropriate or risqué. Your liaison may be able to help you find an appropriate balance. 

Most audiences tend to switch off after 20 minutes or so, which makes it the perfect time to introduce a quick physical activity or interaction to regain the audience’s attention. Never try this at the start of the presentation though as the audience hasn’t got to know you yet. 

Take into account that you will be speaking slightly slower, spending a few minutes getting to know your audience at the start, and potentially involving them in an activity after 20 minutes or so. If necessary, cut out some of the extraneous content or your presentation may feel rushed. 

10. Evaluate, Review and Continually Improve  

Making presentations to culturally diverse audiences is a fascinating experience that will teach you a great deal about the art of presenting itself. Monitor audience reactions and identify what they are receptive to. This will help you eliminate things that don’t work and focus on those that build better relationships.  

Master the Art of Presenting with Style and Confidence!

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Company Culture Presentation template

Good company culture can be the difference between landing top talent and losing them to the competition. When an employee finds a company that matches their values, they tend to form better relationships with their colleagues in turn making them more motivated and productive. A company culture presentation helps you define things like your work environment, values and mission, and expectations of employees for the sake of the onboarding process and beyond. Companies can create a universal standard with Beautiful.ai’s company culture template.    

Our template has everything you need to set your company culture guidelines and share them with internal teams. A successful company culture presentation can help HR managers and teams align on values for a more balanced workplace. 

Our company culture template can also help you:

• Define company culture standards and guidelines
• Onboard new hires more efficiently
• Host annual or quarterly trainings as a refresher to existing employees

Use our template to create an effective company culture presentation

A company culture presentation helps employers encourage and meet employees needs and values. Our template is carefully curated to include everything you need to create inspiring company culture slides. Those slides include:

Quick tips to make an impactful company culture presentation

As you use this template to build your own company culture presentation, keep these do’s and don’ts in mind:

Company culture is an exciting component to joining a new team, so make sure your presentation reflects that. Don’t be afraid to put some personality in your slides.

Picking the right photos and images is essential to the overall success of your presentation. Add photos of team members so new hires know whom to connect with and can put a face to the name.

Is this deck a refresher for existing employees or an onboarding asset for new hires? Consider what information your employees need most, and what questions they may have about company culture during your presentation.

Conversations around company culture should be fun. Include fun facts about the team, talk about company perks, and share your team values in new, engaging ways.

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Company Culture Is Everyone’s Responsibility

• Denise Lee Yohn

A top-down approach doesn’t work anymore.

A top down approach to building company culture no longer works for several reasons. For one, Covid-19 has upended how leaders interact with employees and how coworkers connect with each other. Next, company culture has grown in importance, thanks to recent high-profile crises at big name companies. A new culture-building approach is already in place at some organizations, one in which everyone in the organization is responsible for it. Importantly, this model doesn’t relegate culture-building to an amorphous concept that everyone influences but no one leads or is accountable for. And it weaves in perspectives from employees to customers, from middle managers to the CEO.

Here’s how organizational culture might have been handled in the past: The CEO commissions the Human Resources department to produce an effective company culture. HR designs a campaign to tout a mission statement and core values that the CEO and senior management developed. HR also implements some employee perks like free snacks in the break room or monthly birthday celebrations. Maybe they also field an annual employee engagement survey and report results back to the CEO. And then with their culture-building to-do lists completed, the CEO and HR move on to other priorities.

• Denise Lee Yohn is a leading authority on positioning great brands and building exceptional organizations, and has 25 years of experience working with world-class brands including Sony and Frito-Lay. Denise is a consultant, speaker, and author of What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest and the new book FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies .   

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What Is Work Culture? 11 Ways to Build a Positive Environment.

Your work culture is the shared set of values, beliefs and attitudes that guide your organization, and it’s reflected in the way you treat your customers and employees. Workplace culture impacts the types of candidates you attract for open positions, and having a strong work culture also boosts productivity , decreases turnover and improves employee engagement .

By being intentional with your core values and culture initiatives, you can create a positive work culture that will inspire your team and help your organization thrive.

What Is Work Culture?

Work culture guides employees on what behaviors, expectations and matters of importance are part of the company’s current DNA. It also grows and shifts with the circumstances. 

“It’s a living and breathing thing that’s evolving all the time,” J.C. Herrera, chief human resources officer at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told Built In.

Work Culture Definition

“People need to understand the culture so they know how to get their work done,” Herrera said, adding there are also micro work cultures within an organization from a management culture to an engineering culture to an employee culture.

Work culture is different from a company’s core values, which largely remain the same over time. For example, CrowdStrike updated its core values when the company went through massive growth, expanding from under 400 people to over 4,500.

Its fanatical focus on the customer, high value on innovation and strong belief that anything can be accomplished together never changed, Herrera said.

“We went full circle on this thing and although our original values are roughly the same, it got a lot more organized in terms of how we talk about it,” he said of how the shift influenced work culture.

4 ready-to-use templates to effectively plan, execute and measure your employer brand.

Why Is Work Culture Important?

Work culture can have a profound impact on several significant aspects of the employee experience, like individual and team morale, workplace engagement and job satisfaction. For example, 94 percent of people managers say “a positive workplace culture creates a resilient team of employees,” according to a Society for Human Resource Management survey .

Practices that negatively impact workplace culture and promote a toxic team dynamic can steer an organization in the opposite direction, making it difficult to hire and retain good employees. A 2022 survey of job seekers revealed 23 percent of respondents identified “company values and culture” as a top influence over whether they decide to accept a job offer. That same survey also showed 21 percent of job seekers said “poor company culture” was their top reason for leaving a job in the past year and 34 percent reported leaving a job within the first 90 days because “company culture was not as expected.”

Work culture will naturally form within every organization and sometimes to the detriment of the business. Allowing negative behaviors and toxic attitudes to fester will cultivate an unfavorable work experience — and an expensive one too. Toxic workplace cultures cost U.S. employers $223 billion in turnover over a five- year period, according to a report by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Work culture not only guides employees in the workplace, but it also guides customers on whether they want to do business with you.

Customers, for example, are not only checking out a company’s employee reviews on social media sites. They are also making direct inquiries in their discussions with sales teams.

“When we’re doing requests for proposals, potential customers will ask questions in the RFP. They’ll ask us to describe our culture. So it's been a part of some of the customers’ sales process,” Herrera said.

Read More 4 Benefits of a Strong Organizational Culture

Elements of Workplace Culture

There are several factors that go into developing work culture. Research from the MIT Sloan School of Management and CultureX based on Glassdoor data identified 10 elements of culture employees care most about:

• Feeling respected.
• Having supportive leadership.
• Whether leaders’ actions align with core values.
• Managers who foster a toxic work environment.
• Witnessing unethical behavior.
• Perks and amenities.
• Opportunities for learning and professional development.
• Job security.
• Frequency and quality of reorganizations.

The actions an employer takes to move the needle in a positive or negative direction when it comes to team culture can play an important role in employees’ sense of fulfillment. People who feel unfulfilled at work are less likely to put effort into contributing toward company success or to recommend their current employer to others.

People report experiencing workplace culture most strongly through their employers’ approach to performance, recognition and celebrations and company mission and values, according to a 2022 Quantum Workplace survey. These foundational elements of work culture involve making sure employees feel their individual contributions are valued and their voices are being heard.

Survey respondents commonly used words like “flexible,” “inclusive,” “friendly,” “collaborative” and “fun” to characterize “ideal workplace cultures.” Most employees say defining and communicating culture starts with leaders and managers. But more than half also see employees at all levels as individual contributors in shaping culture.

An SHRM survey of more than 9,000 workers in a dozen different countries found they overwhelmingly agree “empathy is an essential quality of a healthy workplace.” Those whose employers offer empathy training for people managers are more likely to say their workplace has “a culture of open and transparent communication,” feel physically safe on the job, report trust in their supervisor and cite culture as a reason they love their job.

How to Create a Positive Work Culture

To get started building the company’s work culture of your dreams , first lay out your core values. These should be the foundation of everything that happens at your company and guide your organization’s evolution. Dedicate as much time as necessary to ensure everyone is aligned, and include leadership, long-term employees and HR representatives so all significant parties can weigh in. In the end, you should have a concise list of values that accurately reflect your current company culture and long-term goals.

Then, think about the type of work culture you want to create. Consider everything from the physical layout of the office to how frequently employees interact with their colleagues, managers and members of the C-Suite. From there, the real work begins.

Further Reading 20 Drivers of Employee Engagement for a More Positive and Productive Workplace

How to Improve Workplace Culture

Improving work culture isn’t a speedy process. To achieve long-term, sustainable change there needs to be commitment that starts at the top of the organizational structure. It requires leaders who are willing to set an example for consistent communication, accountability and transparency. 

Leaders who are working to improve workplace culture need to be ready to follow-through on investing in the initiatives that matter most to their team members. One survey showed providing “professional development opportunities” was at the top of the list of ways to improve company culture. Another survey revealed 38 percent of job seekers would turn down a job offer from a company lacking diversity or that didn’t have a strategy in place for enhancing diversity.

The majority of people say they can tell in less than a month whether a company’s culture will be a good fit for them , and many even say they need less than a week. It’s imperative companies start sooner rather than later on making meaningful cultural change.

Tips to Improve Work Culture

• Set clear objectives to guide employee performance.
• Make sure employees understand the organization’s long-term goals.
• Establish diversity initiatives and promote inclusive practices.
• Encourage transparency and open communication among department heads, management and team members.
• Let every employee have a seat at the table and empower them to share their thoughts.
• Create opportunities for employees to get to know one another at work and outside of work to foster meaningful relationships.

Set Clear Departmental Goals 

Outline the objectives of each team so employees have tangible results to work toward. Not only will this help guide individual performance, but it will encourage collaboration between team members. Make sure there is room for feedback to adjust quotas and KPIs when needed. 

For example, if a team is continually reaching their objectives without breaking a sweat, you might want to modify their target goals to push production further. 

Promote the Organization’s Goals

In addition to setting departmental goals, make sure every employee is clear on the organization’s long-term objectives. This will help individuals cultivate a sense of professional purpose. Having a source of motivation beyond quarterly quotas will demonstrate the value each role has toward achieving the company’s mission.

Promote Diversity and Inclusivity 

Create a positive, inclusive work culture by welcoming individuals from all backgrounds and celebrating their differences. Encourage employees to share their pronouns with the rest of the team to promote inclusive language and consider establishing a committee to contribute to diversity initiatives . Work with the HR department to make diversity a part of your recruitment strategy and ensure diversity and inclusion continue to be foundational elements as your organization grows.

Allow for Lightheartedness 

Work has its stressful moments and being able to make a difficult situation more lighthearted is an invaluable skill. Of course, the ultimate goal should be to resolve the problem, but a fresh perspective and positive outlook is more productive than the alternative. As Dale Carnegie, an American writer and lecturer, said, “People rarely succeed unless they are having fun in what they are doing.” If you can afford to find the bright side and let your team know that you have their back, they’ll return the favor by working even harder.

Prioritize Respect 

Every individual should feel valued and heard, regardless of their status within the company. Interns offer a much greater advantage than being delegates for busy work, and new employees bring a fresh perspective. You never know where the next big idea will come from, so let every employee have a seat at the table and feel empowered to share their thoughts. 

Establish a Strict Zero Tolerance Policy

Just as important as creating a welcoming environment is ensuring employees know their rights and individualities are protected within the workplace. A crucial facet of a positive work culture is providing employees with the opportunity to speak openly about issues they are facing — in and outside of the office — and have access to the support and resources they need. Make sure HR representatives have flexibility within their schedules to be available for personal conversations when needed, and consider implementing an anonymous sexual harassment hotline as a secure and private way for employees to report incidents in the workplace.

Create an Employee Recognition Program 

Recognize and reward employees for achieving outstanding results. Doing so will encourage employees to continue performing at impressive levels, and make them feel valued within the company. It will also motivate their peers to up their game, fostering a work culture of friendly competition that leads to high performance.

Accept and Utilize Your Employee’s Feedback 

In fact, try to change your perspective on feedback. Rather than considering it to be indicative of something you’re doing wrong, think of it as the opposite — your employees care so much about the organization and its success that they are trying to help make it better. They’re choosing to bring their pain points to your attention and it gives you the opportunity to fix them instead of the employee stewing over them and eventually leaving the company out of frustration. 

Be Flexible 

Life happens and things will get in the way. Employees shouldn’t fear repercussions for taking time to manage other emergencies or responsibilities outside of work. For example, if an employee is struggling to balance work with their family life, try to figure out a compromise that allows them to be productive at work without sacrificing their personal life. You’ll earn the respect of your employees rather than the reputation of being unaccommodating and unapproachable. Not only that, but flexible schedules can help you attract elite candidates; nearly 50 percent of job seekers said “flexibility and autonomy” are what they want most from an employer.

Be Transparent 

Engaged employees invest their full selves into the success of the company, and they deserve your leadership team’s trust. Promote transparency and open communication between department heads, management and team members. Doing so will create a positive work culture where employees feel heard and valued. Consider implementing a recurring internal newsletter to share critical information with the team, and hold a monthly town hall meeting to make company-wide announcements that require more context.

Plan Social Outings 

Humans are social beings that crave interaction. Create an opportunity to get to know each other at work and outside of work to foster meaningful relationships between employees. You can keep it simple by having a hybrid Friday happy hour in the office while simultaneously offering remote workers an online presence at the party. Think about the types of events your team would most enjoy when coming up with new work culture ideas .

Read Next You’ve Finally Nailed Down Your Company Values. What Happens Next?

Work Culture Don’ts

Don’t encourage employees to work through lunch.

While lunch breaks are not legally required, allowing employees to shut off their computer for 30 minutes to an hour each day helps create a positive work culture. Your team is not composed of robots, so expecting employees to continuously churn out quality work over the course of eight hours without breaks is unrealistic — and unhealthy. More than that, it suggests that employees are only valued for their work output, not as individuals. Regular breaks have actually been shown to improve productivity and 81 percent of employees who break for lunc h on a daily basis report having a desire to actively contribute to their organization.

Don’t Reschedule One-On-Ones 

If you’ve set aside time to meet with an employee individually, do your best to honor that meeting, especially if something else comes up. Doing so will show you value and respect the individual’s time, and care about what they have to say.

Don’t Make It Easy for Disengaged Employees to Stick Around

Having an engaged workforce will help propel your company forward on its path to success, while disengaged employees will slow down progress. If you notice individuals who are counterproductive to your team’s success, pull them aside to discuss their behavior. If nothing improves after making an effort to positively address the situation, it is time to part ways and help them find another position more suited for their needs and goals. Sometimes disengaged employees are stuck in a rut professionally and just need a little support to get back on their feet.

Don’t Limit Learning Opportunities to Job Descriptions 

Skill building is an important part of a positive work experience. Allow employees to pursue their passions, both in and outside of the office, and encourage information sharing between colleagues. This exchange of knowledge will lead to improved employee relationships, collaboration and camaraderie. 

Don’t Hire for Work Culture Fit 

A key part of creating a diverse community within the office is hiring for culture adds , not culture fits. The cultural add recruiting model means identifying candidates who share and embody your core values and who offer a unique perspective. You want to continue to grow and develop your work culture and company, so look for candidates who will productively add to your team, not necessarily fit into a mold.  

Don’t Tolerate Poor Managers  

Managers directly impact employee engagement and performance. In fact, 81 percent of employees who consider their work culture to be “poor” have seen a manager allow others in the workplace “to get away with bad behavior.” At the same time, close to 90 percent say “their manager contributes to setting their work team environment.” Managers interact with their direct reports most frequently, so it’s vital to make sure those individuals who are leading a team are doing so with conviction and in accordance with your core values. 

Don’t Expect HR to Do All of the Work

As hard as HR teams may try, work culture isn’t created by a handful of people. It’s a team effort and HR teams can’t be tasked with doing it alone. Positive cultures are created when everyone works together.   

Don’t Force It

Positive and fulfilling work cultures don’t just appear overnight. Keep to your values, listen to your employees, have some fun, and it will take shape organically. Work cultures that keep people happy and businesses thriving take time — it’s worth it.

Creating a positive work culture where everyone feels valued, welcomed and respected is vital to an organization’s success. Be sure to take your employee’s feedback into account and lean on them to help cultivate a great work experience.

Dawn Kawamoto contributed to this story.

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Adapt Your Presentation for Different Cultures

Language can be a communication barrier, but it is not the only barrier that public speakers have to overcome when presenting to other cultures. While delivering a message across language barriers comes with its own challenges, there are cultural differences that exist even among those who speak or understand the same language. Culture is a common root of many miscommunications, as it influences how we interpret messages and how we participate in group settings. To reach your intended audience effectively, your presentation must be delivered with an understanding of the lens through which your audience will view it.

Develop Awareness

A handshake may be standard in the United States, but in other countries, such as France, a peck on the cheek among business associates is common practice. Implementing the proper greeting for the culture to which you are presenting will offer a good first impression and encourage your audience to be more receptive.

However, developing awareness of another culture is not limited to greetings and physical contact. How you set up the room can also be critical. Space, positioning, and even the time of day for which the presentation is scheduled should all be determined by the culture of your audience. Scheduling an 8-a.m. presentation in New York for those who flew in from Asia and are severely jetlagged will significantly reduce chances of your message being heard. And scheduling presentations that disrupt holidays important to other cultures can appear insensitive and rude. Would you attend a presentation on Christmas Day or Yom Kippur?

Know Your Audience

It’s important to know your audience’s style of reasoning . Americans work from an “applications-first reasoning,” basing conclusions on factual observations from the real world. The focus is on the “why” rather than the “how.” Conversely, European cultures work from a “principles-first reasoning,” basing conclusions from general principles or concepts. There is a focus on the “why” and less concern for the “how.”

Why is this knowledge important to your presentation? If your audience is rooted in a “principles-first” culture and you are speaking from an “applications-first” perspective, everyone in the room will struggle. You’ll wonder why your audience seems to be targeting you with specific questions regarding how you came to your conclusions, and the audience will feel as if they have missed a main idea. Conversely, an American audience could be immensely bored by a “principles-first” presentation, wondering when you will get to your point. Knowing your audience determines the direction and format of your message content.

Furthermore, in striving to know your audience, it’s important to determine if they appreciate a personal touch or would rather get down to business. If you are not certain, ask questions of colleagues or conference hosts prior to your presentation, to ensure that your approach will positively engage and not offend your audience.

Are You Listening?

A well-delivered presentation requires you to actively listen. Brief pauses can allow you to assess whether your audience is receptive to your message or if they are somehow confused regarding the point of your message. Pay attention to both verbal and non-verbal forms of communication, and be open to questions at any time. Be adaptable. If your presentation is not delivering the intended message, properly adjust how you are communicating.

When it comes to adapting your presentation for different cultures, sometimes  what you say is not nearly as important as how you say it. Without clarity and an understanding of your audience’s cultural expectations, you may as well be speaking another language. Adhere to the basics of limiting humor and speaking slowly, but be mindful of the more intricate aspects of communication when presenting across cultures.

Franchetti Communications delivers accelerated results by designing power-packed media interview and presentation training sessions around your unique goals, in person and via teleconference. Franchetti Communications works with corporations and business leaders to develop communication strategy, messaging, and PR strategy. Follow Franchetti Communications on  LinkedIn , and be sure to download our special report:  6 Ways to Guarantee Your Message Cuts Through the Clutter .

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A new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum explores the creative practice of Amish quilters in the United States. “ Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women ” looks beyond quilting as a utilitarian practice. It reveals historical quilting among the Amish as an aesthetic endeavor that walked a line between cultural and individual expression. The quilts paradoxically twin the plain with the spectacular, tradition with innovation, and a dismissal of personal pride with objects often seen as extraordinary artworks.

The exhibition is on view from March 28 through Aug. 26 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s main building in Washington, D.C. It is organized by Leslie Umberger, curator of folk and self-taught art, and Virginia Mecklenburg, senior curator, with support from Anne Hyland, curatorial assistant. Janneken Smucker, cultural historian and professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is the primary author of the exhibition catalog and contributed to the exhibition; she is a fifth-generation Mennonite quilt maker of Amish Mennonite heritage.

The exhibition celebrates a major gift announced in 2021 of Amish quilts to the museum by Faith and Stephen Brown. They began collecting quilts in 1977, four years after encountering Amish quilts for the first time at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in the exhibition “American Pieced Quilts.” The 50 quilts featured in “Pattern and Paradox” include 39 from the museum’s collection and 11 promised gifts. Around 100 additional quilts from the Browns’ exemplary collection are promised to the museum as a bequest.

“Faith and Stephen Brown assembled this extraordinary collection with care and devotion over some four decades after a revelatory visit to the Renwick Gallery. It comprises the largest and most widely representative group of Amish quilts ever to be acquired by a major art museum,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director. “Their generous gift reaffirms SAAM’s long-standing commitment to equity in representation for art and artists and brings sharply into focus the complexity and importance of exhibiting diverse cultures in the museum setting.”

In the late 19th century, Amish women adopted an artform already established within the larger American culture and made it distinctly their own, developing community and familial preferences with women sharing work, skills and patterns. The quilts in “Pattern and Paradox” were made between 1880 and 1950 in communities united by faith, values of conformity and humility and a rejection of “worldly” society. No specific guidelines governed quilt patterns or colors, so Amish women explored uncharted territory, pushing cultural limitations by innovating within a community that values adherence to rules. Styles, patterns and color preferences eventually varied and distinguished the various settlements, but it was the local quilters who drove and set the standards.  

Today, Amish quilts present a particular quandary for art museums and audiences. By the mid-20th century, Amish quilts were increasingly being shown in museums. 

“‘Pattern and Paradox’ invites viewers to consider the dual identity of Amish quilts,” Umberger said. “These objects traveled into the art world in the late 20th century, but the Amish women who made them never intended them to be seen as artworks. Audiences and collectors responded to the striking color combinations and inventive abstract patterns, but the Amish were uneasy with the idea of having made and possessing museum-worthy, valuable artworks and began divesting of these quilts. Seen here, hanging on the gallery walls like paintings, they prompt us to consider the subjectivity of words like ‘artist’ and ‘art’ and consider how cultural perspective can transform one’s understanding of an object.” 

Although vintage quilts remain among the most recognized manifestations of Amish culture, they represent the historical, localized trends of only a finite period from a living and changing culture. The exhibition celebrates the quilts, the women who made them, the collectors who preserved and donated them, and considers the unique role of Amish quilts in American art today, roughly a century after those in this collection were made.

Book The accompanying catalog, published by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in association with D Giles Limited, is written by Smucker with an introduction by Umberger. It will be available for purchase ($34.95) in the museum store and online .

Free Public Programs  A series of free public programs will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition. Umberger and the Browns will tour visitors through the exhibition Friday, April 12, at 11:30 a.m. A second gallery talk with Umberger and Smucker will be held Friday, May 24, at 11:30 a.m. Smucker will give a lecture Thursday, May 23, at 6:30 p.m.; registration is required. Details about these programs and additional events are available on the museum’s website .

Credit “Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women” is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Generous support has been provided by Faith and Stephen Brown, Billings and John Cay, Barbara Coffey Endowment and the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. This exhibition received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, and from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the National Collections Program.

Note to editors: Selected high-resolution images for publicity only are available through the museum’s Dropbox account. Email [email protected] to request the link.

About the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the flagship museum in the United States for American art and craft. It is home to one of the most significant and inclusive collections of American art in the world. The museum’s main building, located at Eighth and G streets N.W., is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The museum’s Renwick Gallery, a branch museum dedicated to contemporary craft, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Check online for current hours and admission information . Admission is free. Follow the museum on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and YouTube . Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Museum information (recorded): (202) 633-7970. Website: americanart.si.edu .

Press Images

Unidentified Maker​​, Crazy Star ; ca. 1920​​, Arthur, Illinois​​, cotton and wool; 74 x 63 ½ in. (detail), Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown, Promised gift to the Smithsonian American Art Museum

• Exhibition - Pattern and Paradox, Wall text
• Exhibition - Pattern and Paradox, Publicity image sheet
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Asian America Through Arts and Culture: A Spring DEI Presentation

This May, in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the DEI department has invited professor, Josephine Lee to join us on Monday, May 6th, 2024 , from 12:30pm-1:30pm  at NHCC in the Campus Center (Multicultural Room 244)  for a hybrid (zoom optional) presentation titled: Asian America Through Arts and Culture.  All NHCC students, employee's and community members are welcome to attend (the zoom link for this presentation will be added at a later date). 

Learn about visiting professor, Josephine Lee in her bio, below!

Josephine Lee is currently the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities and Professor of English and Asian American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She is the editor in chief of  The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture.  Her other books include: Race in American Musical Theater,   Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage and the edited collection  Milestones in Asian American Theatre.  She has received a Leadership Award from the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies.

We hope you can join us in May for this exclusive AAPI presentation!

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BGSU celebrating APIDA culture with presentation by author, journalist Putsata Reang

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio – As part of its celebration of Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi American (APIDA) Heritage Month, Bowling Green State University will hold a free, public presentation with author and journalist Putsata Reang at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, in the Multipurpose Room at the Bowen-Thompson Student Union.

Offered by the BGSU Office of Multicultural Affairs , Reang's presentation is part of the 2024 Beyond the Dream Speaker Series and will highlight her extensive career and journey from birth in Cambodia to growing up in rural Oregon, where she and her family worked on berry farms to earn a living.

With works published in The New York Times, Politico, The Guardian, Ms., The Seattle Times and more, Reang has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries, including Afghanistan and Thailand. She is an alumna of Hedgebrook, Mineral School and Kimmel Harding Nelson residencies. She is a 2019 Jack Straw fellow. In 2005, she received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship that took her back to Cambodia to report on landless farmers. She currently teaches memoir writing at the University of Washington School of Professional and Continuing Education.

Reang will also give a free, public presentation at BGSU Firelands at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 3, in the Cedar Point Center on the Huron campus.

For more information, visit BGSU.edu/BeyondTheDream .

Updated: 03/28/2024 04:26PM

7 Ways to Inspire Creativity in the Workplace and Why it’s Important

Whether it’s creative problem-solving or the flexibility to decide how work gets done, creativity in the workplace is integral to growth, innovation, and the overall employee experience..

In today's rapidly evolving workplace landscape, the significance of creativity cannot be overstated. From fostering innovation to seizing new opportunities, a creative mindset is the cornerstone of success. A creative person, equipped with fresh perspectives and inventive ideas, can transform concepts into reality.

A commitment to cultivating a creative environment empowers teams to brainstorm smart solutions and adapt to challenges seamlessly. Below, we have collated some innovative solutions to make embracing creativity easier than ever, whilst also highlighting why entrepreneurs should prioritize creative thinkers and creative activities within their corporate culture to drive success.

Why is Creativity Important in the Workplace?

The benefits of creativity in the workplace are impressive and far-reaching. Beyond promoting fresh thinking, opening up a space for creativity at work creates a positive company culture in which team bonding is encouraged, employee productivity booms, and out-of-the-box thinking is encouraged. 

Here are key advantages of creativity in the workplace:

• Professional Growth: Creativity in the workplace promotes an environment conducive to continuous learning and development. Employees are encouraged to engage in divergent thinking, exploring various perspectives and solutions. This fosters personal and professional growth as they tackle challenges creatively, opening up additional opportunities for employees.
• Innovation and Opportunities: Creative ideas catalyze innovation, driving businesses forward in competitive markets. By encouraging employees to think outside the box, companies can uncover innovative solutions to complex problems, opening new avenues for growth and expansion.
• Positive Outcomes and Solutions: Embracing creativity cultivates a culture where failures are viewed as stepping stones to success rather than setbacks. Employees are more inclined to take calculated risks and experiment with new ideas, leading to freedom of discovery.
• Inclusive Environment: A culture of creativity fosters inclusivity by valuing diverse perspectives and contributions. Employees feel empowered to express their ideas freely, knowing that their voices are heard and respected. This creates a sense of belonging and encourages collaboration among team members.
• Enhanced Everyday Work Life: Creativity injects excitement and inspiration into everyday work life, making tasks more engaging and fulfilling. Employees are motivated to explore fresh ideas and approaches, leading to a more dynamic and enjoyable work environment.

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7 Tips To Inspire Creativity In The Workplace

If you want to provide employees with the freedom to experiment with innovative ideas without the fear of failure, it is essential to foster creative workplaces. However, creativity in business rarely takes center stage, so most business owners don’t know where to start in their commitment to creativity. To make the process easier, we have collated some inventive solutions to help you spark creativity in the workplace. 

1. Encourage Creativity With an Inclusive and Fun Team Environment

A genuine team-based environment , in which leaders encourage connections through collaboration and social time, is essential for innovative teamwork. Managers will notice a remarkable difference when the effort is made to “de-silo” the organization. Instead of staying separate and heads-down on only their projects, employees should have the opportunity to interact with colleagues in different departments to gain an informed understanding of the company as a whole. This will spark creative thinking and allow for ideas and inspiration to flow freely across departments.

Additionally, humour in the workplace plays a significant role in team-bonding. Research shows that humour can reduce stress, increase relationship building, and create better cohesion. You can create a "water cooler" channel on Slack or similar chat software to allow your employees to enjoy some office banter, especially if your team is remote or hybrid. You can also add buffer time to your team meetings to allow time for everyone to chat about their weekend plans or other casual conversations. 

Of course, humour should be universal and non-exclusionary. Avoid any hot-button topics or things that run the risk of being mean-spirited such as pranks or teasing. It’s also important to note that sarcasm—while common—can “have a corrosive effect” and even come across as degrading when it’s at someone’s expense.  A playful but polite company culture helps create a sense of belonging and safety, which is the gateway to creative expression and thought-generation. 

2. Promote Creativity Through Office Design

A creative company prioritizes an exciting workspace that inspires creativity and innovation. Even if your office layout is more cubicles than open space, there are still ways that you can help employees feel inspired by their surroundings. For example, you can encourage employees to bring in photos, prints, or small decorative objects from home. You can also hang some artwork on the wall and bring in task lighting and tall lamps. 

Add office plants to help purify the air and bring a touch of nature inside. These simple steps bring an inherent element of creativity into any space. You should also consider investing in sit-stand desks to give your employees flexibility and better health, as backaches aren’t conducive to creative thinking. These elements, along with others, can create an atmosphere in which employees feel more comfortable and creative. 

3. Provide Freedom and Flexibility in How Work is Done

Creativity in the workplace does not have to mean creativity in the workspace. Sometimes a change of scenery can help spark new ideas. Every now and then, switch up your team routine with off-site and walking meetings. Brainstorming at a coffee shop might generate more ideas than you think, as it helps to break up the routine. You should also encourage any remote or hybrid employees to do the same.

If your employees have returned to the office full-time, consider expanding or updating your current remote work policy to allow employees more flexibility while helping them cut costs and save employees time when it comes to commuting. Offering flexibility in the workplace is essential for not just creativity, but also retention and recruitment , “with 80% of employees identifying it as a crucial factor in job evaluation".

Breaking Routine and Addressing Working-From-Home Fatigue

4. Offer the Space for Knowledge Sharing

There is no shortage of talent and skills within your organization that are just waiting to be passed on. Encouraging your employees to share what they know and what they can do with other coworkers fosters a culture of collaboration which helps spark creativity and allows teams to overcome challenges through creative solutions. This can be done through lunch-and-learns or special classes taught over video or in small groups. Sessions can include Excel tips, LinkedIn profile best practices, and guided meditation/yoga.

Sessions are a great way for your team members to discover new interests or passions that they can master and apply in their roles or to help maintain their work-life balance. By providing a platform for your people to engage in knowledge exchanges, they’ll benefit from professional development in the forms of thought leadership, increased confidence, and increased creativity.

How to Build a Positive Remote Company Culture and Why it Matters

5. Encourage the Practice of Self-Reflection

Encourage employees to get in the habit of self-reflection check-ins. This exercise helps them to focus on what they’ve achieved, as well as what’s coming up next and helps inspire them to see things differently. Rise’s performance management feature includes weekly check-ins . Employees are prompted to rate their week, what went well, and what could’ve gone better. 

It’s a great way for managers to keep track of how an employee is doing, while also giving the employee a chance to reflect on their work. If possible, also share monthly or quarterly accomplishments with your team so they can see the concrete results of their contributions. 

6. Support Employees in Creative Risk-Taking

Cultivate an office culture that rewards creative risk-taking . One reason why employees are not thinking out of the box or proposing different solutions could be due to a fear of making mistakes and not having their ideas supported. As much as possible, make it clear to your employees that your organization values creativity—and understands its importance. 

This can be communicated by being receptive to new ideas and recognizing risk-takers for the impact they've made. As well, be open to feedback and suggestions from your employees. Provide an open door policy or offer an anonymous outlet for anyone who wishes to share their thoughts privately.

How to Create an Effective Open Door Policy at Work

7. Encourage Healthy Competition 

Healthy competition in the workplace can be encouraged through various means, fostering innovation and creativity. Business owners can initiate challenges that stimulate employees' innovation skills and encourage the flow of ideas. By promoting a culture that embraces risk-taking and learning from failure, employees feel empowered to explore innovative solutions to challenges.  Through fostering a competitive edge, teams strive to outperform each other, driving them to push boundaries and generate novel ideas. 

Discover How to Encourage a Healthy and Creative Working Environment 

Rise 's people management platform fosters a positive working environment by prioritizing employee engagement and satisfaction. With features like seamless onboarding, performance tracking, and feedback mechanisms, it promotes transparency and communication.

By streamlining HR processes and empowering employees, Rise cultivates a culture of trust, collaboration, and growth. This creates a supportive atmosphere where individuals thrive, leading to a happier and more productive workforce.

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• Section 5 - Perspectives : Testing Travelers for Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Infection
• Section 5 - Yersiniosis

Typhoid & Paratyphoid Fever

Cdc yellow book 2024.

Author(s): Michael Hughes, Grace Appiah, Louise Francois Watkins

Infectious Agent

Transmission, epidemiology, clinical presentation, typhoid fever.

INFECTIOUS AGENT:  Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi

Latin America

Asia (greatest risk for infection is in South Asia)

TRAVELER CATEGORIES AT GREATEST RISK FOR EXPOSURE & INFECTION

PREVENTION METHODS

Follow safe food and water precautions

Typhoid fever is a vaccine-preventable disease

DIAGNOSTIC SUPPORT

Paratyphoid Fever

INFECTIOUS AGENT: Salmonella enterica serotypes Paratyphi A, B, C

Salmonella enterica serotypes Typhi, Paratyphi A, Paratyphi B, and Paratyphi C cause potentially severe and occasionally life-threatening bacteremic illnesses referred to as typhoid fever (for Typhi serotype) and paratyphoid fever (for Paratyphi serotypes), and collectively as enteric fever. Paratyphi B strains are differentiated into 2 distinct pathotypes on the basis of their ability to ferment tartrate: the first pathotype, Paratyphi B, is unable to ferment tartrate and is associated with paratyphoid fever; the second pathotype, Paratyphi B var. L(+) tartrate(+), ferments tartrate and is associated with gastroenteritis typical of nontyphoidal salmonellosis. For more details on nontyphoidal salmonellosis, see the Sec. 5, Part 1, Ch. 19, Nontyphoidal Salmonellosis .

Humans are the only source of the bacteria that cause enteric fever; no animal or environmental reservoirs have been identified. Typhoid and paratyphoid fever are acquired through consumption of water or food contaminated by feces of an acutely infected or convalescent person, or a person with chronic, asymptomatic carriage. Risk for infection is high in low- and middle-income countries with endemic disease and poor access to safe food and water, and poor sanitation. Sexual contact, particularly among men who have sex with men, has been documented as a rare route of transmission.

An estimated 11–21 million cases of typhoid fever and 5 million cases of paratyphoid fever occur worldwide each year, causing an estimated 135,000–230,000 deaths. In the United States during 2016–2018, ≈400 culture-confirmed cases of typhoid fever and 50–100 cases of paratyphoid fever caused by Paratyphi A were reported each year; paratyphoid fever caused by Paratyphi B and Paratyphi C is rarely reported. Approximately 85% of typhoid fever and 92% of paratyphoid fever cases in the United States occur among international travelers; most are in travelers returning from South Asia, primarily Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Other high-risk regions for infection include Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia; lower-risk regions include East Asia and the Caribbean.

Travelers visiting friends and relatives are at increased risk because they might be less careful with food and water while abroad than other travelers and might not seek pretravel health consultation or typhoid vaccination (see Sec. 9, Ch. 9, Visiting Friends & Relatives: VFR Travel ). Although the risk of acquiring illness increases with the duration of stay, travelers have acquired typhoid fever even during visits of <1 week to countries where the disease is highly endemic (e.g., Bangladesh, India, Pakistan).

The incubation period of both typhoid and paratyphoid infections is 6–30 days. The onset of illness is insidious, with gradually increasing fatigue and a fever that increases daily from low-grade to 102°F–104°F (38°C–40°C) by the third or fourth day of illness. Fever is commonly lowest in the morning, peaking in the late afternoon or evening. Anorexia, headache, and malaise are nearly universal, and abdominal pain, constipation, or diarrhea are common. Diarrhea and vomiting are more common in children than in adults. People also can have dry cough, fatigue, myalgias, and sore throat. Hepatosplenomegaly often can be detected. A transient, maculopapular rash of rose-colored spots can occasionally be seen on the trunk.

The clinical presentation is often confused with malaria. Suspect enteric fever in a person with a history of travel to an endemic area who is not responding to antimalarial medication. Untreated, the disease can last for a month, and reported case-fatality ratios are 10%–30%. By comparison, the case-fatality ratio in patients treated early is usually <1%. Serious complications of typhoid fever occur in 10%–15% of hospitalized patients, generally after 2–3 weeks of illness, and include life-threatening gastrointestinal hemorrhage, intestinal perforation, and encephalopathy. Paratyphoid fever appears to have a lower case-fatality ratio than typhoid fever; however, severe cases do occur.

Typhoid and paratyphoid fever are nationally notifiable diseases in the United States. Clinicians should report cases to their state or local health department. Identification of a domestically acquired case should prompt a public health investigation to prevent other cases.

Blood Culture

Patients with typhoid or paratyphoid fever typically have bacteremia; blood culture is therefore the preferred method of diagnosis. A single culture is positive in only ≈50% of cases, however. Multiple blood cultures increase the sensitivity and might be required to make the diagnosis. Depending on the blood culture system used, cultures might need to be held and observed for up to 7 days before reporting a negative result. Although bone marrow culture is more invasive (and therefore less commonly performed), it increases the sensitivity to ≈80% of cases and is relatively unaffected by previous or concurrent antibiotic use. Stool culture is not usually positive during the first week of illness and has less diagnostic sensitivity than blood culture. Urine culture has a lower diagnostic yield than stool culture.

Rapid Diagnostic Tests

Globally, several commercial rapid diagnostic tests for typhoid fever are available, but their sensitivity and specificity are not optimal. The Widal test measures elevated antibody titers; it is unreliable but widely used in developing countries because of its low cost. Serologic tests do not distinguish acute from past infection or vaccination and lack specificity; thus, blood culture remains the preferred method to diagnose acute infections.

Clinical Diagnosis

Poor sensitivity and specificity of rapid antibody tests and the time it takes to obtain a positive culture mean that the initial diagnosis must often be made clinically. Typhoid and paratyphoid fever are clinically indistinguishable. The combination of risk factors for infection and gradual onset of fever that increases in severity over several days should raise suspicion of enteric fever.

Antibiotic therapy shortens the clinical course of enteric fever and reduces the risk for death. Treatment decisions are complicated by high rates of resistance to many antimicrobial agents, and antimicrobial treatment should be guided by susceptibility testing. A careful travel history can inform empiric treatment choices while awaiting culture results.

Multidrug-Resistant Infection

Established resistance to older antibiotics (e.g., ampicillin, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) has led to these agents being recommended only as alternative antibiotics for infections with known susceptibility. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) Typhi with resistance to all 3 of these antibiotics has been present for decades. Regional estimates for MDR Typhi range from 9% in South Asia (2015–2018) to 35%–59% in parts of Africa (2010–2014).

Fluoroquinolones (e.g., ciprofloxacin) are still considered the treatment of choice for fluoroquinolone-susceptible infections in adults. Most Typhi and Paratyphi A infections in the United States are fluoroquinolone-nonsusceptible, however, and most (>90%) have occurred among travelers returning from South Asia. Fluoroquinolone-nonsusceptible infections have been associated with treatment failure or delayed clinical response. Therefore, azithromycin and ceftriaxone, antibiotics with historically low rates of resistance globally, are increasingly being used as empiric treatment for enteric fever.

Extensively Drug-Resistant Infection

In 2017, among all Typhi and Paratyphi A isolates tested by CDC’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), <1% were resistant to azithromycin or to ceftriaxone, based on resistance criteria for Typhi. Resistance to both agents is emerging, however. In 2016, an outbreak of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) typhoid fever began in Sindh Province, Pakistan. These XDR Salmonella Typhi isolates are typically resistant to ampicillin, ceftriaxone, chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, but susceptible to azithromycin and carbapenem antibiotics.

The first US cases of XDR typhoid fever associated with travel to Pakistan were diagnosed in 2018, and by early 2021 >70 XDR infections had been documented among residents of the United States, including 9 cases among patients who did not travel internationally in the 30 days before illness began. Ceftriaxone resistance also has been identified in Typhi isolates from US travelers returning from Iraq. Additionally, resistance to azithromycin has been identified among Typhi and Paratyphi strains isolated from patients in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Empiric treatment should be guided by the patient’s travel history. For patients with suspected typhoid fever who traveled to Iraq or Pakistan, or who did not travel internationally before their illness began, empirically treat uncomplicated illness with azithromycin, and treat complicated illness with a carbapenem. Ceftriaxone remains an appropriate empiric treatment option for travelers returning from most other countries. Once culture results are available, use susceptibility information to guide treatment. Case reports have suggested that patients with XDR Typhi infection who do not improve on a carbapenem alone might benefit from the addition of a second antibiotic (e.g., azithromycin). Updated information about antimicrobial resistance among isolates from US patients with enteric fever in the United States can be found at the NARMS website .

Cases Unresponsive to Treatment

Patients treated with antimicrobial agents can continue to have fever for 3–5 days, but the maximum temperature generally decreases each day. Patients sometimes feel worse during the first few days after commencing antibiotic treatment. If fever in a person with typhoid or paratyphoid infection does not subside within 5 days of initiating antibiotic therapy, however, consider treatment with alternative antibiotics or begin looking for a persistent focus of infection (e.g., an abscess, or an infection in a bone, joint, or other extraintestinal site).

Relapse, Reinfection & Chronic Carriage

Relapse, reinfection, and chronic carriage also can occur. Relapse occurs in ≤10% of patients 1–3 weeks after clinical recovery, requiring further antibiotic treatment. An estimated 1%–4% of treated patients become asymptomatic chronic carriers (defined as people who excrete the organism in stool for ≥12 months); a prolonged antibiotic course is usually required to eradicate the organism.

Food & Water Precautions

Safe food and water precautions and frequent handwashing, especially before meals, are important in preventing both typhoid and paratyphoid fever (see Sec. 2, Ch. 8, Food & Water Precautions ). Although recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), typhoid vaccines are not 100% effective, and a large bacterial inoculum can overwhelm vaccine-induced immunity. Therefore, vaccinated travelers should follow recommended food and water precautions to prevent enteric fever and other infections. No vaccines are available for paratyphoid fever; thus, food and water precautions are the only prevention methods.

Indications

The ACIP recommends typhoid vaccine for travelers going to areas where risk for exposure to Typhi is recognized. Destination-specific vaccine recommendations are available at the CDC Travelers’ Health website. Two typhoid vaccines are licensed for use in the United States: Vi capsular polysaccharide vaccine (ViCPS) (Typhim Vi, manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur) for intramuscular use; and live attenuated vaccine (Vivotif, manufactured from the Ty21a strain of serotype Typhi by PaxVax) for oral use. Both vaccines are unconjugated, which means the polysaccharide antigens are not paired with a protein to elicit a strong response from the immune system. Because these vaccines protect 50%–80% of recipients, remind travelers that typhoid immunization is not 100% effective, and take the opportunity to reinforce safe food and water precautions. Neither vaccine is licensed to prevent paratyphoid fever, although limited data from efficacy trials suggest that the Ty21a vaccine might provide some cross-protection against Paratyphi B.

Newer, protein conjugated Vi vaccines have greater efficacy in children <2 years old and protect people for longer than Vi unconjugated polysaccharide vaccines. Three typhoid Vi conjugate vaccines (TCV) have been licensed in India: Peda Typh (manufactured by Biomed); Typbar-TCV (manufactured by Bharat Biotech); and Zyvac TCV (manufactured by Zydus Cadila). Typbar-TCV also is licensed in Cambodia, Nepal, and Nigeria. Although none of these vaccines are licensed or available in the United States, Tybar-TCV received prequalification from the World Health Organization in 2018. The vaccine is approved for use in people ≥6 months old. In a human challenge study, Typbar-TCV had ≈87% protective efficacy. Interim analysis from a large field study in Nepal has shown Typbar-TCV effectiveness of 81.6% in children after 15 months of follow-up.

Administration

For information on dosage, administration, and revaccination for the 2 typhoid vaccines licensed in the United States, see Table 5-07 . The time required for primary vaccination differs, as do the lower age limits for each.

Table 5-07 Typhoid fever vaccines

Abbreviations: IM, intramuscular; NA, not applicable.

1 Vaccine must be kept refrigerated at 35°F–46°F (2°C–8°C).

2 Capsules should be taken with cool liquid, no warmer than 98.6°F (37°C)

VI Capsular Polysaccharide Vaccine

Primary vaccination with ViCPS consists of one 0.5-mL (25-μg) dose administered intramuscularly ≥2 weeks before travel. The vaccine is approved for use in people ≥2 years old. A dose is recommended every 2 years for those who remain at risk.

Live Attenuated Ty21A Vaccine

Primary vaccination with Ty21a vaccine consists of 4 capsules, 1 taken every other day. The capsules should be kept refrigerated (not frozen), and all 4 doses must be taken to achieve maximum efficacy. Each capsule should be swallowed whole (not chewed) and taken with cool liquid no warmer than 98.6°F (37°C), approximately 1 hour before a meal and ≥2 hours after a previous meal. The manufacturer recommends avoiding alcohol consumption 1 hour before and 2 hours after administration, because alcohol can disintegrate the enteric coating.

Travelers should complete the Ty21a vaccine regimen ≥1 week before potential exposure. The approach for addressing a missed oral vaccine dose or taking a dose late is undefined. Some suggest that minor deviations in the dosing schedule (e.g., taking a dose 1 day late) might not alter vaccine efficacy; no studies have shown the effect of such deviations, however. If travelers do not complete 4 doses as directed, they might not achieve an optimal immune response. The vaccine is approved for use in people ≥6 years old. A booster dose is recommended every 5 years for those who remain at risk.

Adverse Reactions

Adverse reactions most often associated with ViCPS vaccine include headache, injection-site reactions, fever, and general discomfort. Adverse reactions to Ty21a vaccine are rare and mainly consist of abdominal discomfort, diarrhea, fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, and rash. Report adverse reactions to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System at the website or by calling 800-822-7967.

Precautions & Contraindications

Neither the ViCPS nor the Ty21a vaccine should be given to people with an acute febrile illness; in addition, Ty21a is not recommended for use in people with acute gastroenteritis. Live vaccines, including Ty21a vaccine, should not be given to pregnant or immunocompromised people, including those with HIV. No information is available on the safety of the inactivated vaccine (ViCPS) in pregnancy; consider ViCPS for pregnant people when the benefits of vaccination outweigh potential risks (e.g., when the likelihood of exposure to Typhi is high).

The intramuscular vaccine (ViCPS) presents a theoretically safer alternative than the live, oral vaccine (Ty21a) for immunocompromised travelers. The Ty21a vaccine can be administered to household contacts of immunocompromised people; although vaccine organisms can be shed transiently in the stool of vaccine recipients, secondary transmission of vaccine organisms has not been documented. The only contraindication to vaccination with ViCPS vaccine is a history of severe local or systemic reactions after a previous dose.

Theoretical concerns have been raised about the immunogenicity of Ty21a vaccine in people concurrently receiving antimicrobial agents, live vaccines, or immune globulin. The growth of the live Ty21a strain is inhibited in vitro by various antimicrobial agents. The manufacturer advises that vaccination with the Ty21a vaccine should be delayed for >72 hours after the administration of any antimicrobial agent, and antibiotics should not be given to a patient ≤72 hours after the last dose of the Ty21a vaccine.

Ty21a vaccine can be administered simultaneously or at any interval before or after live virus vaccines (e.g., measles-mumps-rubella, oral polio, or yellow fever vaccines). Available data do not suggest that simultaneous administration of live virus vaccines decreases the immunogenicity of the Ty21a vaccine. If typhoid vaccination is warranted, it should not be delayed because of administration of viral vaccines. No data are available on coadministration of the Ty21a vaccine and the oral cholera vaccine (lyophilized CVD 103-HgR [Vaxchora]); taking the first Ty21a vaccine dose ≥8 hours after oral cholera vaccine might decrease potential interference between the vaccines. Simultaneous administration of the Ty21a vaccine and immune globulin does not appear to pose a problem.

CDC website: Typhoid fever and paratyphoid fever

The following authors contributed to the previous version of this chapter: Grace D. Appiah, Michael J. Hughes, Kevin Chatham-Stephens

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InfoQ Homepage Presentations How Netflix Really Uses Java

How Netflix Really Uses Java

Paul Bakker discusses Netflix’s use of Java, emphasizing the use of microservices, RxJava, Hystrix and Spring Cloud.

Paul Bakker is a Java Champion and developer in the Java Platform team at Netflix. At Netflix he works on evolving the Java tech stack and developer tooling. He is also one of the original authors of the DGS Framework (GraphQL) and co-authored two Java modularity books published by O’Reilly.

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Bakker: I'm going to talk about how Netflix is really using Java. You probably know that Netflix is really just about RxJava microservices, with Hystrix and Spring Cloud. Really, Chaos Monkeys are just running the show. I'm only half getting here because a few years ago, this was actually mostly true, maybe except the Chaos Monkeys. This stack was something that we were building on in the last several years. Things have changed. Quite often, I have conversations with people at conferences like this one, where they're like, yes, we were using the Netflix stack. Like, which stack exactly are you talking about? It's almost never the stack that we're actually using. These are just things that people associate with Netflix, because we've been talking about our technology for so many years, but things might have changed a little bit. We're going to bust some myths. We're going to take a look at what we're actually doing with Java. Things are ever-evolving. Things are literally just changing all the time.

My name is Paul. I'm in the Java Platform at Netflix. Java Platform is responsible for the libraries, frameworks, and tooling that we built around Java, so that all our Java developers have a good time developing Java applications. I'm also a Java champion. I have been in the Java space for quite a long time. In the past, I wrote two books about Java modularity. I'm also one of the first authors of the DGS framework, that's the GraphQL framework we use for Java. We'll talk quite a bit about DGS, and how that all fits in the architecture.

Evolving Architecture

Before we start diving into JVMs and how we use Java, and the framework that we're using, we have to understand a little bit better how our architecture has been evolving. That explains why we did things in a certain way with Java several years ago, and we're doing things quite differently today. What you should understand about Java at Netflix is that we have a lot of Java. We are basically a Java shop, and every backend at Netflix is basically a Java app. We have many applications. At the size of Netflix, there's lots of internal applications to just keep track of things. We're also one of the largest film studios in the world. There's a lot of software being developed just to produce films, basically, again, all Java. Then of course, we have what we call the streaming app, which is basically the Netflix app, as you probably know it. That is what we're looking at here. This screen here is what we call the LOLOMO, the list of list of movies. That is just one example of an application that is backed by Java. You have to understand that pretty much everything that I'm talking about, that is true for basically every backend in Java. We use the same architecture now for pretty much all our different systems, both internal and consumer facing, and we use the same tech stack everywhere. Although I'm giving that example, because it's just a large example to play with, it's much more universal than that.

The Groovy Era

When I joined Netflix almost seven years ago, we were in what I call the Groovy era. What you probably know about Netflix, and this is still true, is that Netflix has a microservices ecosystem. Basically, every piece of functionality and every piece of data is owned by a specific microservice. There's many of them, literally thousands of them. On the slide here, I just made it up, because it makes sense in my head. It's a much-simplified version of what we actually have in production. Think about this LOLOMO screen, this list of list of movies that we just looked at, at a previous slide, you're probably familiar with that screen, that to render that screen, we would have to fetch data from many different microservices. Maybe there's like a top 10 service that we need, because we need a top 10 list of movies. That's backed by a specific service. Then there's an artwork service that gives us the images as we show in the LOLOMO, and these are all personalized as well. There's probably a movie metadata service, which gives us movie titles and actors and descriptions of movies. There's probably a LOLOMO service which is actually giving us what lists to actually render, which again is personalized. I say that we have maybe 10 services to call out to. It will be usually inefficient if your device, let's say, your TV, or your iOS device will just do 10 network calls to these different microservices. It will just not scale at all. You would have a very bad customer experience. It would feel like using the Disney app. It's just not ideal. Instead, we need a single front door for the API where your device is calling out to. From there, we do a fanout to all the different microservices, because now we are in our network, we are on a very fast network. Now we can do that fanout without performance implications. We have another problem to solve, because all these different devices, in subtle ways, they're all a little bit different. We try to make the UI look and behave similar on every different device. All these different devices, like a TV versus an iOS device have very different limitations when it comes to memory, network bandwidth. They actually load data in subtly different ways.

Think about, how would you create an API that would work for all these different devices? Let's say you create a REST API. We're probably going to get either too little or too much data. If we create one REST API to rule them all, it's going to be a bad experience for all these different devices, because we always waste some data, or we have to do multiple network calls, which is also bad. To fix that problem, what we did is we used what we call a backend for frontend pattern. Basically, every frontend, every UI gets its own mini backend. That mini backend is then responsible for doing the fanout and get the data that that UI exactly needs at that specific point. They used to be backed by a Groovy script. That mini backend was basically a Groovy script for a specific screen on a specific device, or actually a version of a specific device. These scripts would be written by UI developers, because they are the only ones who actually know what data exactly they need to render a specific screen. This Groovy script would just live in an API server, which is a giant Java app, basically. It would do a fanout to all these different microservices by just calling Java client libraries. These client libraries are just basically wrappers for either a gRPC service, or a REST client.

Now, here we started seeing an interesting problem, because, how do you take care of such a fanout in Java? That's actually really not trivial. Because if you will do this the traditional way, you create a bunch of threads, and you start to manage that fanout with just minimal thread management, that gets very hairy very quickly, because it's not just managing a bunch of threads, it is also taking care of fault tolerance. What if one of those services are not responding quickly enough? What if it is just failing? Now we have to clean up threads and make sure that everything comes together nicely again. Again, not trivial at all. This is where RxJava and reactive programming really came in. Because reactive programming gives you a much better way to do such fanouts. It will take care of all the thread management and stuff like that you need to do. Exactly because of this fanout behavior, that is why we went so deep into the reactive programming space, and we were partly responsible for making RxJava a big thing many years ago. On top of RxJava, we created Hystrix, which is a fault tolerant library, which takes care of failover and bulkheading, and all these things. This made a lot of sense seven years ago when I joined. This was the big architecture that was serving most traffic. Actually, it is still a big part of our architecture, because depending on what device you're using, if it's a slightly older device, you probably still get served by this API, because we don't have just the one architecture we have many architectures, because it is nicer that way.

Limitations

There are some limitations, although this obviously works really well, because we have been able to grow our member base based on this architecture primarily. One downside is that there's a script for each endpoint. Because, again, we need an API for each of these different UIs. There are just a lot of scripts to maintain and manage. Another problem is that because the UI developers have to create all the mini backends because they are the ones who know what data they need, they have to write those. Now they are in the Groovy Java space and using RxJava. Although they're very capable of doing so, it's probably not a primary language that they are using on a daily basis. The main problem is really that reactive is just really hard. Speaking for myself, I've been doing reactive programming for at least 10 years. I used to be extremely excited about it, and tell everyone about how great it all is. It is actually hard, because even if with that experience, look at a non-trivial piece of reactive code, I have no clue what's going on. It takes me quite a bit of time to actually wrap my head around, ok, this is actually what's happening. These are the operations that are supposed to happen. This is the fallback behavior. It's hard.

GraphQL Federation

Slowly, we have been migrating to a completely new architecture, and that is, we're putting things to a different perspective. That's all based on GraphQL Federation. Comparing GraphQL to REST, one very important aspect of GraphQL is that with GraphQL, you always have a schema. In your schema, you put all your operations, so your queries and your mutations, and you define them, and you tell it exactly which fields are available from the types that you're returning from your queries. Here we have a shows query, which returns a show type, and a show as a title, and it has reviews. Reviews again is another type that we define. Then we can send a query to our API, which is on the right-hand side of the slide. What we have to do there, and this is, again, really important, we have to be explicit about our field selection. We can't just ask for shows and get old data from shows. Now we have to say specifically that you want to get a title and the star score on reviews on a show. If we're not asking for a field, we're not getting a field. It is super important because again, compared with REST, very basically, you get whatever the REST service decides to send you. You're just getting the data that you're explicitly asking for. It's more work if you specify your query, but it solves the whole problem of over-fetching, where you get much more data than you actually need. This makes it much easier to create one API that serves all the different UIs. Typically, when you send a GraphQL query, you will just get the result back encoded as JSON.

We're not just doing GraphQL, we're actually doing GraphQL Federation to fit it back into our microservices architecture. In this picture, we still have our microservices, but now we call them DGSs. They're just a term that we at Netflix came up with. It's a domain graph service. Basically, it's just a GraphQL service. There's really nothing special about it, but we call them DGSs. A DGS is just a Java microservice, but it has a GraphQL endpoint. It has a GraphQL API. That also means it has a schema, because we said that for GraphQL, you always have a schema. The interesting thing is that we have, of course, many different DGSs, many different microservices. From the perspective of a device, so from the perspective of your TV, for example, there's just one big GraphQL schema. The GraphQL schema contains all the possible data that we have to render, let's say a LOLOMO. Your device doesn't care that there might be a whole bunch of different microservices in the backend, and that these different microservices might provide part of that schema. On the other side of the story on the microservices sides, in this example, our LOLOMO DGS is defining a type show, with just a title. The images DGS can extend that type show and add an artwork URL to it. These two different DGSs don't know anything about each other than the fact that there is a show type. It can both contribute parts of that schema, even on the same types. All they need to do is publish their schema to the federated gateway. Now the federated gateway knows how to talk to a DGS because they all have a /GraphQL endpoint. That's it. It knows these different parts of the schema, so if a query comes in where we ask for both title and artwork URL, it knows that it has to call out to these different DGSs, and fetch the data that it needs. On a very high level, not that different from what you previously had, but there's a lot of differences in the details.

I'll also change our story here. First of all, we don't have any API duplication anymore. We don't need a backend for frontend anymore because GraphQL as an API is flexible enough, because of field selection that we don't really need to create those device specific APIs anymore. It also means we don't have server-side development for UI engineers anymore. That's great. We do get a schema to collaborate on. That's a big deal, because now we have closed the gap between UI developers and backend engineers, because now they can collaborate on a schema and figure out, ok, what data do we need in what format? Very importantly, we don't have any client libraries in Java anymore, because the federated gateway just knows how to talk to a generic GraphQL service. It doesn't need specific code to call out to the specific API. It's all just GraphQL. All it needs to know, how to talk to a GraphQL service. That's all. It's all based on the GraphQL specification. We don't need specific code to call to a specific microservice anymore.

What Does that Mean for Our Java Stack?

Now we get into, how does that change our Java stack? There's really no place anymore where we need Rx, or Hystrix, or such things, because previously, we needed this because we needed that specific code to call out, ok, I want to call this microservice and then this microservice, and at the same time, this other microservice. We needed an API for that. We don't need it anymore, because that's now taken care of by the GraphQL Federation specification. That's not completely true, because the federated gateway itself is actually still using a web client to call the different DGSs, and that is still reactive. However, it is not using any specific code for this microservice anymore. It's actually a very straightforward piece of web client code where it knows, ok, I have to call these three services, just go do it. It's all GraphQL, so it's very simple. All the DGSs and the other microservices in the backend, they're all just normal Java apps. There's not really anything specific about them. They don't need to do any reactive style of programming pretty much anywhere.

The Micro in Microservices

Before we dive deep into the rest of our Java stack, I want to speak a little bit about the micro in microservices, because it's another thing that people seem to be confused about how it actually works in practice. It is true that a microservice owns a specific functionality or dataset. More importantly that such microservices are owned by a single team. That is a really important part about microservices. It is all even more true with this GraphQL federated architecture, because it's now even easier to just split things out in different microservices and make it all work very nicely. However, don't be fooled by the size of those microservices, because a lot of those so-called microservices at Netflix are a lot larger, just looking at the code base, than the big monoliths that I've worked at, at many other companies. Some of these systems are really big. There's a lot of code there. Of course, when they get deployed, they might be deployed on clusters of thousands of AWS instances. There's really nothing small about them. That also answers the question, should I do microservices? It depends on your team size. Do you have like the one team that takes care of everything, and it's just a small team? If you would add microservices there, you're just adding complexity at that point for no good reason. If you want to split your team into smaller teams, basically, and just because of team size, then it also makes sense to split up your larger system into smaller pieces so that each team can own and operate one or more of those services.

Java at Netflix

Time to actually really get into the Java side of things. We now know, on a higher level, how and where we're using Java. Now we talk about how it actually looks like. We are now mostly on Java 17. It is about time. We are already also actively testing and rolling out with Java 21. Java 21 just came out officially. We're just using a regular Azul Zulu JVM. It's just an OpenJDK build. We are not building our own JVM, we don't have any plans to build our own JVM. Although there was a very interesting Reddit thread claiming that we do. We really don't, and have no interest in doing so. OpenJDK is really great. We have about 2800 Java applications. These are mostly all microservices of a variety of sizes. Then about 1500 internal libraries. Some of them are actual libraries, and many of them are just client libraries, which is basically just sitting in front of a gRPC or REST service. For our build system, we use Gradle, and on top of Gradle we have Nebula, that's a set of open sourced Gradle plugins. The most important aspect of Nebula, and I highly recommend looking into this, is, first in resolution of libraries. As you know, Java has a flat classpath. You can only have the one version of the library at a given time, if you have more than one version, interesting things happen. To prevent these interesting things from happening, you really want to just pick one, basically, and Nebula takes care of that. The next thing that Nebula does is version locking. Basically, you will get reproducible builds that you always build with the same set of versions of libraries until you explicitly upgrade. That makes it all very reproducible. We're pretty much exclusively using IntelliJ as our IDE. In the last few years, we have also invested a lot of effort in actually developing IntelliJ plugins, to help developers doing the right thing.

The Java 17 Upgrade

We are mostly on Java 17. That is actually a big deal, because this is embarrassing, but at the beginning of the year, we were mostly on Java 8. Java 8 is old. Why were we still on Java 8? Because we had Java 11, and then Java 17 available for a very long time already. Somehow, we just didn't move. One of the reasons is that until about a year ago, about half of our microservices, especially the bigger ones, were still on our old application stack. It was not Spring. It was a homegrown thing based on Guice, and a lot of old Java EE APIs, lots of old libraries that were no longer maintained. At the very beginning when we started upgrading to Java 11 initially, a lot of these older libraries were just not compatible. Then developers just got the impression that this upgrade is hard, and it breaks things, and I should probably just not do it. On the other hand, there was also very limited perceived benefits for developers, because if you compare Java 8 to Java 17, there's definitely some nice language features. Text blocks alone are enough reason for me to upgrade, but it's not that big of a deal. The differences between 8 and 17 is nice, but it's not like changing your life that much. There was more excitement about moving to Kotlin than we did in just upgrading to JDK.

When we finally did start pushing on updating to Java 17, we saw something really interesting. We saw about 20% better CPU usage on 17 versus Java 8, without any code changes. It was all just because of improvements in G1, the garbage collector that we are mostly using. Twenty-percent better CPU is a big deal at the scale that we're running. That's a lot of money, potentially. Speaking about G1, G1 is the garbage collector that we use for most of our workloads, at the moment. We've tested with all the different garbage collectors available. G1 is generally where we got the best balance of tradeoffs. There are some exceptions, for example, Zuul, which is our proxy. It runs on Shenandoah, that's the low pause time garbage collector. For most workloads, Shenandoah doesn't work as well as G1 does. Although G1 isn't that exciting anymore, it is still just really good.

Now that we have finally made a big push to Java 17, and we've got most services just upgraded, we also have Java 21 available. We've been testing with that for quite a few months already. Now things really get exciting. The first exciting thing is that if you're on Java 17, upgrading to Java 21 is almost a no-op. It's just super easy. You don't have the problems that we had from Java 8 to newer versions. There's also just a lot more interesting features. The first obvious one that I'm super excited about is virtual threads. This is just copy-paste, it's from the JEP, the specification from Java 21 of virtual threads. It's supposed to enable server applications written in a simple thread-per-request style to scale at near optimal hardware utilization. It sounds pretty good. This thread-per-request style, if you're using something that's based on servlets, so Spring Web MVC, or any other framework based on servlets, thread-per-request is basically what you get. A request comes in, Tomcat or whatever server you're using gives it a thread. That thread is basically where all the work happens, or starts happening for the specific request, and stays through that request until the request is done. That is a very simple style and easy to understand style of programming, and all the frameworks are based on that. It has some scalability limitations, because you can only have so many threads effectively running in a system. If you have a lot of requests coming in, which we obviously have, then the number of threads is just a limiting factor in how you can scale your systems. Changing that model is really important. The alternative to that is, of course, doing reactive again, so do something like WebFlux. That also gets you in reactive programming, again, with all the complexities that we already talked about.

Now, I think that virtual threads is probably the most exciting Java feature since probably lambdas. I think that down the line, it is really going to change the way we write and scale our Java code. I think that, in the end, it is probably going to further reduce reactive code, because there's just not really any need for it anymore. It just takes away that complexity. We have already been running virtual threads in production for the last month or so, experimenting with it a little bit. I'll get back to that in more detail. Then the other interesting feature in Java 21 is the new garbage collector or the updated garbage collector, because ZGZ is not new. That was already available in previous versions. They now made it generational, and that makes it give more benefits over G1 as a garbage collector has. That will make ZGC a better fit for a broader variety of workloads. It's still focused on low pause times, but it will just work in a broader variety of use cases. It's a little bit early to tell because we haven't done enough testing with this yet, but we are expecting that ZGC is now going to be a really good performance upgrade, basically, for a lot of our workloads and a lot of our services. Again, these things are a really big deal, where we could save a lot of money on resources. Shenandoah is also now generational, but that is still in preview. Again, we're going to just run with that and see what happens. Garbage collection is really just too complex of a topic to just know that, drop in this garbage collector with this flex, and it's all going to be magic and super-fast. Just doesn't work that way. It's a business where you just try things out and then you tweak it a bit, and you try it again, and then you find the optimal state. We're not quite there yet. We are expecting to see some very interesting things there. Then, finally, in Java 21, you just also have a lot of nice language features. We get this concept of data-oriented programming now in the Java language. It is really nice. It's the combination of records and pattern matching and things like that. Java is pretty nice right now.

Virtual Threads

Back to virtual threads. Although I said that this is a big deal, and is probably going to change the way we write our code and scale our code, it is also not a free lunch. It's not just that you enable Java 21 on your instances, and now by the magic of virtual threads, everything runs faster. It doesn't work that way. First of all, we have to change our framework library, and to some extent application code to actually start leveraging virtual threads, so step one. There are a few obvious places where we can do that and already started experimenting, so the Tomcat connection pool. Again, these are the pool of threads where it gives threads-per-request. That seems a fairly obvious place where we can just use virtual threads instead. Instead of using a thread pool, you use virtual threads. Before you enable that, you are already running some big services in production with virtual threads enabled. It doesn't automatically make things a lot faster, because you need to do other things as well to really leverage it. It also doesn't make things worse. If you can just safely enable this basically, sometimes get some benefits out of it, sometimes it doesn't really change it because it wasn't a limiting factor. That's something that you should probably start with. Async task execution in Spring that is, again, just a thread pool, and very often you get blocking code for other network calls there anyway. It seems to be a good candidate for virtual threads, so we enabled it there. Then a really big one that we haven't really gotten into yet, but I expect that will be game changing is how we do GraphQL query execution. Potentially with GraphQL, every field can be fetched in parallel. It makes a lot of sense that we would actually do that on virtual threads because, again, this is often work in code where you do more network calls and things like that. Virtual threads just make a lot of sense there, but we have to implement this and test it out, and it'll probably take a little bit of time before we get the optimal model there.

Then we have some other places that seemed obvious. For example, we have a thread worker pool for gRPC clients where the gRPC calls to outgoing services happen. It seemed like such an obvious place like, let's drop in virtual threads there. Then we saw that we actually decreased performance by a few percent. It turns out that these gRPC client worker pools are very CPU intensive. If you then drop in virtual threads, you actually make things worse. That's not a bad thing, necessarily. This is just something that we had to learn. It does show that this is not a free lunch. We actually have to figure out, where does it make sense, where does it not make sense, and implement virtual threads at the right points, basically. The good news is this is mostly all framework work at this point. We can do it as a platform team, and we can do it in open source libraries that we're using. Then our developers will just get faster apps, basically. It's good. In Spring 6.1, or Spring Boot 3.2, there's a lot of work being done to leverage virtual threads out of the box, that will come out next month. We will probably adopt that somewhere early next year. Then there's a really interesting discussion going on on GitHub, in GraphQL Java, about changing the GraphQL query execution, or potentially even rewriting it to fully leverage virtual threads. That is not figured out yet. It's a discussion going on. If you're in that space, that's definitely something to contribute to, I think. Then for the user code, because all this other stuff is mostly framework code, for user code, I think structured concurrency is the other place that we're going to see a lot of replacement of reactive code. Because structured concurrency is finally giving us the API to deal with things like fanouts, and then bringing everything together again. Structured concurrency is still in preview in Java 21. It seems very close to final, so I think it's at least safe to start experimenting with this and try things out. Then a little bit further down the line, we also get scoped values, which is another new specification coming out related to virtual threads. That is going to give us a way to basically get rid of ThreadLocal. This is again mostly framework related work. It's just a much nicer and more efficient way of something similar to ThreadLocal.

Spring Boot Netflix

I've already mentioned a little bit that we use Spring Boot. Since about a year or so we have completely standardized on Spring Boot. Up until a year ago, about 50% of our applications were still on our own homegrown, not maintained at all, Java stack based on Guice, and a bunch of very outdated Java EE libraries. We didn't really make a good push in getting everything on Spring Boot. All the new applications were based on Spring Boot already. That became very messy, especially because that old homegrown framework just wasn't maintained very well. We made a really big effort to just get all the services migrated to Spring Boot. That migration was mostly just a lot of blood, sweat, and tears of a lot of teams. It's just not easy to go from one programming model to another one. As platform teams, we did provide a lot of tooling, for example, IntelliJ plugins to take care of, where possible, the code migrations and configuration migrations and things like that. Still, it was just a lot of work. Pretty painful. Now that we are on Spring Boot, though, we have like the one framework that everyone is using that makes things a lot nicer for everyone. We are trying to mostly just use the latest version of OSS Spring Boot. We're going to be using 3.1, and try to stay as close as possible to the open source community because that's where we get the most benefit. On top of that, we need a lot of integration with our Netflix ecosystem and the infrastructure that we have. That is what we call Spring Boot Netflix, and is basically just a whole set of modules which we build on top of Spring Boot. That's basically just developed in the same way as Spring Boot itself is built, so lots of auto-configurations. That's where we add things like gRPC client and server support that's very integrated with our SSO stack, for AuthZ and AuthN. You get observability, so tracing, metrics, and distributed logging. We have a whole bunch of HTTP clients that take care of mTLS and again observability and integration with the security stack. We deploy all these applications with embedded Tomcat, which is pretty standard for a Spring Boot application.

To give an idea of the features, how that looks like. We have, for example, a gRPC Spring client. This looks very Spring-like, but it is something that we added. Basically, this is referencing a property file, which describes the gRPC service, it tells where the service lives. It configures failover behavior. That way, you can just use a Java API with an extra annotation to call another gRPC service. With that, you also get things like observability completely for free. For any request, either gRPC or HTTP, you get observability for free with tracing, and metrics, and all these things available. Another example is maybe integrate with Spring security, so we can get our SSO color. You get the user basically, that's called your service, even if there were many services in between in a cold chain. As I said, we integrated with Spring Security to also do role-based authentication based on our own authentication models.

Why Spring Boot?

You might be wondering, why are we using Spring Boot, why not some other more fancy framework? Because, of course, there's been a lot of innovation in the Java space in the last few years with other frameworks available. Spring Boot is really the most popular Java framework, that doesn't necessarily make it better, but it does give a lot of leverage when it comes to using the open source community, which is really big, of course, for Spring Boot, and accessing documentation, training, and all these things. More importantly, I think, is just looking at the Spring framework, it has been just so well maintained over the years. I think I started using the Spring framework 15 years ago. It is quite amazing, actually, that that framework has been so stable and so well-evolved, basically, over time, because it's not the same thing as it was 15 years ago, but a lot of the concepts are still there. It gives us a lot of trust, basically in the Spring team that also in the future, this will be a very good place to be basically.

The Road to Spring Boot 3

Almost a year ago, Spring Boot 3 came out, and that was a big deal, because Spring Boot 3 really just involves the Java ecosystem, I think, because the Java ecosystem was a little bit stuck in two different ways. The first reason is that if you look at the open source ecosystem in Java, it was stuck on Java 8, because a lot of companies were stuck on Java 8, and no one wanted to be the first one who would break that basically. Companies didn't upgrade because everything just worked fine on Java 8 anyway. Now, finally, the Spring team has said, we are done with Java 8, Java 17 is your new baseline. Now we force the whole community basically, to say, ok, fine, we'll do Java 17, and everything can start moving again. Now we can start leveraging those new language features. It also makes it possible that although it's just baseline on Java 17, we can actually also start using Java 21 with virtual threads under the hood. That's exactly what they're doing. The second part is the whole mess around Javax to Jakarta, thanks to Oracle. This is just a simple namespace change, but it is extremely complex for a library ecosystem, because a library can either use Javax or Jakarta, and that makes it either compatible with one but not the other. That's super painful now, because the Spring team is now saying, ok, if you're just doing Jakarta, now the whole ecosystem can start moving because it had such a big impact. We finally get past that point that they were stuck on. It is a big change to get on these new things still, so moving to Spring Boot 3 isn't fulfilled, and we've done a lot of tooling work to make that happen. Probably the most interesting one there is we open sourced a Gradle plugin that does bytecode transformation at artifact resolution time. When you download an artifact, a JAR file, it will do bytecode translation if you're on Spring Boot 3 from Javax to Jakarta, so it basically just fixes that whole namespace problem on the fly, and you don't have to change your library. That gets us unstuck.

DGS Framework

Then I talked quite a bit about DGS. DGS is not some concept, GraphQL Federation is the concept. The DGS framework is just a framework that that we use to build our GraphQL services in Java. About three or four years ago, when we started the journey on to GraphQL and GraphQL Federation, there really wasn't any good Java framework out there, that was mature enough for us to use it at our scale. There was GraphQL Java, which is a lower level GraphQL library. That library is great, and we are building on top of it. This is completely crucial for us, but it's too low level to use directly in an application, at least in my opinion. With v1 that is a GraphQL framework for Spring Boot, and basically giving a programming model based on annotation as you are used to in Spring Boot. We needed things like code generation for schema types, and support for federation and all these things. That's exactly what you're getting with the DGS framework. About, I think it's almost three years ago, we decided to open source the DGS framework. It's on GitHub. There's a really large community. There's lots of companies using it now. It's also exactly the version that we were using at Netflix, so we're not using a fork or anything like that. It's really evolved really nicely over the last few years.

You might be wondering if you are actually in the GraphQL and Spring space, you probably have seen that in Spring Boot 3, the Spring team also added GraphQL support, which they called Spring GraphQL. That was not ideal for the larger community, because now the community would have to choose between, ok, do I bet on the DGS framework, or do I go with Spring GraphQL? Both seem interesting, both seem great. Both have an interesting feature set, but a different feature set. What do I bet on? I could go and sell you the DGS framework, how that's better and better evolves, and faster, and all these things which are right now probably true, because we've been around for a little bit longer. That's really not the point, the point is that you shouldn't have to choose. In the last few months, we have been working with the Spring team to get full integration between those two frameworks. What you basically get with that is that you can combine the DGS and Spring GraphQL programming models and its features in the same app, and it will just happily live together. That's possible because we're both using GraphQL Java as the low-level library. That's how it all fits together. We just integrated the framework really deeply. We're still finishing that, and that is probably going to be released early 2024. At least that gives you that idea. It doesn't really matter if you would pick the DGS framework today. It doesn't get you stuck in there and not be able to leverage features coming from Spring team, because very soon you will just be able to combine both very nicely.

Questions and Answers

Participant 1: Are you guys still using Zuul?

Bakker: We are, yes. Zuul is sitting in front of literally every request. Zuul is just a proxy. It's doing a lot of traffic control, basically. It's not the API server that we talked about earlier. Zuul sits in front of either the DGS federated architecture or like the old architecture.

Participant 2: You talked about the upgrade for Java having a limited perceived value there. I think that's interesting. I think a lot of enterprises tend to have this mindset of if it isn't broke, don't fix it, [inaudible 00:44:02]. What did you do to change that perception, or was it just the Spring upgrade that kicked your guys about to do the upgrade?

Bakker: No, actually, the main story was the performance benefit. The fact that we could say that, you get 20% better performance. It depends a little bit on the service, how that number actually looks like and what it actually means. The number is real. The fact that you could say that, that made a lot of service owners more interested in it, but it also gave leadership higher up just to push like, this is going to save money, go do it. That was actually the most helpful thing. The Spring Boot upgrade came later, and also forces the issue, but it was after the fact.

Participant 3: A lot of advancements to OpenJDK, so from 8 to 17, did it directly go from 8 to 17?

Bakker: We had services running on Java 11 because the plan was 8, 11, 17. Java 11, we had services running there, it never really took off because there just wasn't enough benefit. We mostly went from 8 to 17.

Participant 3: Then that's one of the things depending on the collectors as he was talking about, there was some impact with respect to stop-the-world pauses and some background collections that's happening with Shenandoah and ZGC. There's a tradeoff, but a lot of improvements went into reducing the memory sets and everything like that.

Participant 4: You mentioned that 20% was what you needed, but how did you even secure the time to actually experiment with that? How did you convince stakeholders to say, we're going to spend some time doing an upgrade on some services, and then we'll demonstrate the values with that?

Bakker: There is the benefit of having a platform team as we have. If I look at my own time, I could do whatever I want. If I think there is some interesting failure to be had in experimenting with garbage collection, I'm actually not mostly doing performance work, there's actually other folks who are much better at that. It's just an example. If there is potential failure in there, if you can get a time to just experiment with it and play with it, basically, because our time of like one or two people is like drops in the water.

Participant 5: Did you see any difference in the memory footprint between virtual threads versus a traditional one for the same number of request-responses. The second is regarding the GraphQL versus traditional SOAP, because SOAP was superseded by REST back in the days when I was thinking that was very precious, and your network was very important if you don't have a large number of data going through easily. Now that data is cheap, so it has the disadvantage of the schema going between the client and the server. I see that GraphQL also had the same problem now that we have the other query and the schema, going between the client and the server. How do you see the REST, SOAP, and GraphQL in that conjecture?

Bakker: I think SOAP had, conceptually, a few things. For example, the fact that there is a schema, that was a good thing. It was so incredibly hard to use and complex, that the overhead of doing the right things was just too much. Then REST, at least the way everyone is using REST, went the other extreme like no schema, no nothing at all, nothing is defined. You just throw in some data and we're all good. I think GraphQL sits in the middle there. It doesn't have a lot of overhead for developers to implement the schema. It's very easy. It's much easier than SOAP was, just from using it. You do get a schema and that takes away a lot of the downsides of just having REST in the schema. It feels like it has found the sweet spot for APIs. Probably if I'm back here 10 years from now, I will be like, "GraphQL, a terrible idea. How did we ever get to that?" You know how that goes. Right now, it feels like a sweet spot.

There is a difference, that is why we have to be very careful about ending virtual threads where we replace traditional thread pools. Depending on if these thread pools are very CPU intensive or not, it does or does not make a lot of sense. The memory footprint doesn't seem to be a big factor. We haven't seen any significant bumps there at all. Again, it's all very early days, and we're just experimenting with everything. We haven't quite figured it out yet. It seems to be very straightforward from memory.

Participant 6: Then I was just wondering about your Kotlin usage percentage, and what that is looking like?

Bakker: It is fairly low. For a while we had a bunch of teams, including my own team, very excited about Kotlin. The DGS framework itself is written in Kotlin, although it's targeting mostly Java apps. That's my choice. We have microservices written in Kotlin, as well. The only downside that we see with Kotlin is we invest more in developer tooling, so IntelliJ plugins and automated tooling based on Gradle to help with these version upgrades with Spring, and all these things. That story is much harder for a platform team if you have to deal with multiple languages. Because either for an IntelliJ plugin, even if it's both from JetBrains, you need to write your inspections in IntelliJ twice if you want to use both Java and Kotlin. It's just a lot more work. It's just a lot easier for platform teams if everyone is just happily using Java. That doesn't make Kotlin bad, though. We have only seen good things about Kotlin and it works just pretty well. It's a great language.

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Recorded at:

Feb 26, 2024

Paul Bakker

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