Many employees are still working in a remote working environment. Can working from home enhance company culture without an office?
As per data, many employees are still working in a remote working environment. Company culture is a complicated and subjective term. Many people have their way of defining it. For example, some define culture as the sense of organizational belongingness and a strong employee connection. In contrast, others say that the set of shared values drives decisions in the company. Finally, many define culture as an intangible asset described as the organization’s soul. But one thing is common amongst all: culture can play a crucial role in the organization’s success.
But do we have a company culture if there is no office or people? When COVID-19 forced companies to work from home, people realized that work could be done remotely. But after a few months into lockdown, some business leaders started feeling that remote working was killing the company culture. David Solomon, CEO & Chairman of Goldman Sachs, criticized remote work by terming it an aberration. Even Elon Musk, CEO & Founder, Tesla, wrote on social media that remote work has lowered employees’ productivity, and it also sends a wrong message to workers in the factories building cars or other employees who do not have the option of working from home. Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS, also told the media that the company hired one lakh employees during the lockdown. Of that, 25000 switched to other companies without meeting their colleagues or visiting the office. Subramaniam believes that these employees would have never left TCS if they had not been forced into working remotely. Similarly, Harsh Goenka, MD, RPG Enterprise, tweeted that ‘work from home is not a viable option anymore.’
Most of these leaders believed working from home kills the office culture and hampers productivity. After a while, people realized that remote working creates problems such as feeling isolated, lacking camaraderie among employees, and no face-to-face interaction between people. These were some challenges encountered.
But many companies also embraced the flexibility that came with remote working. For example, companies like Aegon Life Insurance adopted a work-from-anywhere policy two years back. Since then, all their employees have been working remotely. Even DXC Technology, an American IT services firm, has followed a 100% remote working model since the pandemic. More firms worldwide chose to continue working remotely or in a hybrid model even when the wrath of COVID-19 started to subside.
Why are we still talking about this
The debate on remote working killing company culture has been done and dusted in the past. But many employees are still working remotely. According to the data published by Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, 36.5 million people in the United States still work remotely. Companies who have decided to stay remote see it as a significant benefit. One of the biggest advantages a remote working model gives is flexibility to employees. One does not need to travel to work and can save time. The company can hire talent from anywhere, and there is more inclusivity in the culture as organizations can include the family members of employees during virtual events and get-togethers, which is impossible in a physical setup.
How can companies still have a culture following a remote working model?
Since we have examples of firms that chose to follow a remote working model even when the impact of COVID-19 subsided around the world, we can learn from their practices how they preserved their culture despite the challenges remote working presented on their face.
Foster collaboration
Remote working does impact collaboration since employees do not interact with each other physically. Rather, interactions are mostly virtual, where establishing an emotional bond is challenging. But a software application firm, Buffer, encourages employees to meet and collaborate. It provides a stipend to employees to collaborate in co-working spaces and cafes for a day or so. This opens a window for employees to meet their colleagues periodically.
Encouraging informal interactions
Informal chats and interactions are essential to any professional bond. It generates empathy among team members. Unfortunately, teams miss these informal interactions in a remote working environment since there are no opportunities for random chats in the office corridors or in the cafeteria during lunch. GitLab, another software developing company, stipends employees to meet at informal events and also takes care of travel expenses. For instance, an employee can use this stipend to attend an employee’s wedding and meet other colleagues.
Build informal groups
One way to connect people is through shared hobbies and interests. In a remote working environment, companies can make different hobby clubs with the help of engagement platforms. Many companies working remotely have adopted this practice to strengthen employee relations further. Employees can use these groups to discuss sports or any art they are interested in.
Training managers
Managers and leaders must adapt to the remote work culture. They must learn new ways and leadership styles to manage teams remotely. Managing teams remotely is not a piece of cake. As a remote manager, one has to be high on empathy, and one will have to conduct intentional check-ins with employees to cross-check whether they are doing fine. Moreover, there needs to be a shift from output based to an outcome-based model of leadership where employees will be evaluated on the concrete results they have achieved at the end of a task rather than focusing on the process.
Cross-functional collaborations
GitLab ensures that every month cross-functional teams spend time training with each other for at least 30 minutes. This fosters collaborations between employees from different departments. In a remote working environment, more cross-functional collaborations must be focused on. The number of cross-functional collaborations has to increase in a remote working model.
Does the remote working model kill culture?
The concern related to company culture concerning remote working is real. But we have seen that many companies have adapted to it. This means that remote working does not kill the company culture altogether. Rather, the culture evolves or changes with the new policies and behaviors required to thrive in a remote working environment.
In an organization, culture keeps evolving. No leader or company can control the shape or course of culture. As new leaders keep coming in and new business goals keep developing over the years, each year, there will be some change to the existing culture, and year after year, it never remains the same.
