Does company culture survive WFH? According to Dina Rabhan, Strategic Consultant,
The answer is a resounding YES!! and
The pandemic is THE perfect time to re-examine your organizational culture.
For healthy companies, culture work never ends. It must be constantly reviewed, adjusted, and fostered.
Let’s start with what culture is not:
- Culture is NOT great snack rooms and coffee machines.
- Culture is NOT ping pong tables and poof chairs.
- Culture is not awesome swag.
- Culture is NOT napping pods (God I love those) and free lunches.
- Culture is NOT even mental health weekends or unlimited paid time off.
All of the above can be part of a culture plan but alone- they are not what defines your company culture.
Culture is made up of the BELIEFS and BEHAVIORS of employers and employees with each other and how they interact with people external to the company.
Culture is NOT shapeless or hard to define.
Culture is not just a feeling. A company’s culture must be explicit, written down, visible, and shared with everyone- internally and externally.
If you say you have a culture value to care about your employees as a ‘people first’ company and that’s why you provide free lunch every day BUT you treat employees awfully, speak disrespectfully, make people wait by coming late to meetings, belittle people, or don’t support their professional growth- then giving them the free lunch is a perk but not a cultural value.
If you have games in the workplace but create a fearful environment where people are afraid to admit error and no one laughs! then the ping pong table is a perk but your culture is NOT supporting playfulness and fun.
If you have a town hall or an all-hands meeting in an effort for transparency and making people feel more a part of the mission but people are afraid to speak truth to power or when they do, they have their loyalties questioned or they even get fired, then your culture is crystal clear. Transparency for show only. Get in line or get out.
Working from home does NOT preclude fostering strong and healthy company culture. It’s actually the perfect time to focus on what culture really is – without the distractions of the fun perks found only in physical spaces.
As appealing as remote work is to employees, it wouldn’t be such a strong trend if employers didn’t also recognize the benefits from their side of the desk. Companies with work-from-anywhere policies can boost employee productivity, reduce turnover, and lower organizational costs, according to recent research at Harvard Business School. Telecommuting workers with very complex jobs who don’t require a lot of collaboration or social support can often perform better than their office-based counterparts.
Also, in the event of a natural or manmade disaster, a distributed workforce is in a better position to keep operations running, even if some of the group goes offline.
If your business has employees who work from home or on the road, or if you require a system to interconnect multiple address locations, please contact us now to explore the options.
