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10 Ways to Create a Positive Company Culture with a Remote Workforce
10 Ways to Create a Positive Company Culture with a Remote Workforce
Hybrid working and remote working are here to stay. Surveys suggest that a high proportion of workers want to continue to work from home due to the work/life balance benefits. With the war on talent, a skills shortage, and the Great Resignation, organizations are struggling to attract and retain staff, so they are having to offer more opportunities forhybrid working and flexible working. A key challenge for business leaders is how to create a positive culture when the majority of your staff are not co-located.
Pre-pandemic, if there were problems with a toxic leader, silo working or poor performance management, those challenges would have been aggravated during lockdowns and issues will have continued in a hybrid working model. Organizations who had already embraced digital transformation, flexible and remote working pre-Covid had existing mutual trust and transparency with their workers
Here are 10 actions employers can take to create a positive culture:
1. Increase Communication: Anyone who has lived through a major Change Management Programme, knows that the key to positive engagement is communication, more communication, and then some! At the onset of lockdowns, amidst all the uncertainty and anxiety, team members wanted to hear the truth from their leaders and to be reassured. Holding regular virtual town halls and all-hands meetings is still a valid intervention to update staff, even more so if job cuts restructures or M and As are on the horizon.
2. Communicate and align any revised Vision, Strategy, Plans and Objectives: Companies have had to modify their vision and strategy dramatically over the past three years and leaders need to keep communicaticating any revised vision, strategy and business plans. Line managers then need to explain how the changes impact key objectives, deliverables and team members KPIs.
3. Recreate the Water Cooler Conversations: Working in an office has many benefits, most notably, the ad hoc interactions at the water cooler when a problem is solved, the impromptu corridor conversations when a solution is found, the sudden spark of creativity at the foosball table during lunch hour. In order to ensure that innovation is not stifled by MS Teams, Zoom meetings and resultant screen fatigue, it’s important for line managers to recreate these casual but pivotal moments with informal stand-up meetings and impromptu telephone calls. To ensure this happens, it’s imperative to keep space blocked out in the diary for creative strategic thinking and planning time.
4. Hold regular Team Meetings virtually in order to deal with strategic and operational issues, but also for more informal social interaction. It’s important that line managers in particular, but also peers and colleagues have the opportunity to show personal interest and build rapport in the ‘new normal'. Allow all team members to speak, don’t mute mikes, hold short, focused video calls to see the whites of everyone’s eyes.
5. Continue to Manage Performance, whilst demonstrating Empathy: Leaders and line managers have had to tread a fine line between still managing output and performance, whilst showing empathy towards team members over the past three years in particular. It's important to encourage collaboration and deliver positive encouraging feedback morning and afternoon so that workers feel connected and have the sense of belonging. The key is to take a proactive approach to health and well-being, offering support, such as Resilience Coaching and EAPs.
6. Revisit your Company Values: Ask for feedback on what employers want the company to look and feel like in the ‘new normal’. Are your values still relevant and do new ones need to be added, in particular to feature sustainability and Diversity and Inclusion? Due to the increasingly volatile, uncertain, changeable, and ambiguous (VUCA) nature of the world and work, it is even more important for leaders to practice authentic leadership, to lead by example, metaphorically walk the floor by being visible online, and communicate very regularly.
7. Use Pulse Surveys to ‘temperature check’ the mood and morale of your workforce and measure general sentiments. Whereas the water cooler conversations were an accurate reflection of company culture, what do you think the IMs between colleagues are discussing? Which functions are feeling happy, overworked, or demotivated?
8. Value your Talent: Most business people are familiar with the expression ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ which is attributed to the late management guru, Peter Drucker, and was popularised by the COO of Ford Motor Company, Mark Fields. At Ford, Fields replaced a culture which was characterised by distrust, fear and betrayal (needing to lay off 30,000 employees) with one of creativity, innovation and responsibility. Now more than ever customers will vote with their thumbs online – as opposed to their feet! If your people aren't offered hybrid working as an option and don't feel valued, they will also vote with their feet.
9. Look out for Digital Presenteeism: Watch out for any nay-sayers who could derail future plans for restructures, stifle innovation and contribute to a toxic culture.
10. Invest in Outplacement Support: In order to maintain an engaged workforce and retain your employer and customer brand, it is worth investing in supportive Career Transition Coaching if you are making people redundant. The resultant attitudes of departing employees and those retained will contribute to the ROI.
'Thank you for your professional approach to our 360 Feedback Review. The SLT felt they were listened to and liked the way you delivered the feedback - even some of the hard-hitting comments! Following this exercise, we can see a culture of increased trust and transparency. This has translated into much improved levels of engagement and retention, so a very worthwhile process.' HR Director
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