Understand Your Workplace Culture Better with OCTAPACE

Check out our ready-to-use OCTAPACE survey template that can help your HR team surface cultural strengths and gaps, quickly and easily.

Run this survey, examine your scores across eight dimensions, and start a structured conversation about where your culture is strong - and where it needs work.

Built on a proven HR framework

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Designed for conversation

Explore the OCTAPACE Survey Template

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What Is OCTAPACE?

OCTAPACE is a framework created by Dr. Udai Pareek and is used to understand how people experience culture at work, beyond policies and stated values.

Instead of treating culture as a vague idea, OCTAPACE breaks it down into eight observable dimensions that influence day-to-day behavior, decision-making, and collaboration.

The 8 OCTAPACE Dimensions

Openness

Are people comfortable sharing ideas, concerns, and feedback?

Confrontation

Do people address difficult issues directly, or do problems get buried and left unresolved?

Trust

Can people count on each other to follow through - and do they feel safe to be honest with leadership?

Authenticity

Do people in the organization share frankly what they think and feel?

Proaction

Do employees take initiative or wait for instructions?

Autonomy

Do people have the freedom to make decisions in their roles without repercussions?

Collaboration

Do employees work together across departments or teams or operate in silos?

Experimentation

Do people try and experiment with new ideas and methods?

Why OCTAPACE Matters for HR Teams Today

Most culture conversations stall because teams lack a shared language. OCTAPACE gives every team a neutral, structured way to:

Discuss culture without blame

Understand how culture differs across teams or levels

Move conversations from opinions to patterns

Identify where culture supports or blocks performance

Support leadership discussions with real inputs

Track cultural shifts when run periodically

Backed by Decades of Research: Dr. Udai Pareek's Instruments

OCTAPACE is one of many validated instruments developed by Dr. Udai Pareek - a pioneering scholar in organizational behaviour and human resource development in India. His instruments have been used across organisations in India and internationally for over two decades.

Dr. Pareek's instruments are not off-the-shelf surveys. Each one is a validated psychometric tool - built on decades of field research across Indian organisations - designed to measure something specific and actionable about how people actually behave at work, not just what they say they believe.

Used together, they give HR teams a layered picture of an organisation: OCTAPACE surfaces the cultural climate, the Visionary Effectiveness Scale diagnoses leadership quality, the Interpersonal Trust Scale maps how well people actually rely on each other, the Personal Effectiveness Scale identifies where individual capability may be holding teams back - and many more that engage with various aspects of organizational functioning.

A Note About the Creators

Dr. Udai Pareek

Dr. Udai Pareek was one of the founding figures of Human Resource Development in India and a central voice in shaping how organizations think about people, culture, and leadership.

At a time when HR largely focused on structures, processes, and control, Dr. Pareek introduced a more human lens. His work emphasized understanding how people actually behave at work, how trust is built, how initiative emerges, and how organizations create environments where individuals can grow.

Key Contributions

• Organizational culture and values
• Leadership and institution building
• Human process interventions
• Application of behavioral science to real workplaces

Dr. T.V. Rao

Dr. T. V. Rao is currently Chairman, TVRLS. A former professor and Board member at IIM Ahmedabad, Dr. Rao is the Founder President of National HRD Network and has been in the forefront of the HRD movement in India.

Dr. Rao worked as a short-term consultant to UNESCO (Bangkok), USAID (Indonesia), UNIDO (Malaysia), and the Commonwealth Secretariat (London), and as HRD consultant in India to over a hundred organizations in both public and private sectors.

Achievements
‍
• Ravi Matthai Fellow (AIMS)
• Asia Pacific HR Professional of the Year 2019 (APFHRM)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from Indian Academy of Management
• Author of over 60 books.

Why We Built This:
EngageWith x NHRD

Springworks founder Kartik Mandaville is a recipient of the Dr. Udai Pareek Scholar award by NHRDN - India's National HRD Network.

NHRD is India's largest and oldest professional body for HR practitioners. With over 21,000 members across 60 chapters in India and international presence in Singapore, the Middle East, and Nepal, NHRDN brings together HR leaders, practitioners, and organizations to shape progressive people practices. Through events, certifications, publications, and awards, it supports the growth of a future-ready HR community.

The Dr. Udai Pareek Scholar award is given to individuals who have made a significant contribution to advancing HRD values and practices in India.

"Bringing Dr. Pareek's rigorously validated instruments into a modern, easy-to-deploy platform is something we feel a genuine responsibility to do. His work is too important to remain locked inside academic textbooks."

— Kartik Mandaville, Founder & CEO, Springworks

Committed to culture, organizational health and employee experience, Kartik has also co-authored the book “The Employee-First Blueprint”, filled with leader insights, frameworks & toolkits, and proven strategies to craft an employee-first workplace that fuels growth, innovation, and retention.