The War on Culture
Before you get too far down the road of whether we’ve decided to make political statements in our blog - this is not an article about culture wars. It is actually about the silent war taking place on company cultures. Big buzzword these days, “culture.” LinkedIn’s recent survey showed that when it comes to recruiting top talent, people would accept lower pay (65%) or a title (26%) than deal with a toxic workplace environment. And it’s not just talent that feels a strong pull to culture. a survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 9 out of 10 CEOs and CFOs believe improving company culture would increase their company’s business value and performance.
So what happens when the number one method of culture transfer - daily connectivity - suddenly goes away? It is a dilemma many many companies are facing with the work from home policies being put into place during Covid - policies that will last long after it’s gone. Yes, there’s the logistics of work from home (bandwidth, security, hardware, privacy, SOPs). But there is also the unlashing of the ties that help bind a company together. Ties that help cement - for good or bad - company culture.
If you are to get ahead of the detrimental effects of work from home - burn out, mistrust, lack of focus, loss of “work family”, you have to get ahead of it now. By the time you see the repercussions in daylight, it’s probably too late to fix. Establishing and reinforcing a corporate culture premised on a work from home structure is key if you want to avoid the biggest effect culture has on the bottom line: employee turnover.
The first step is to begin, if not done so already, building hardiness into your culture. Hardiness is a measure of how well you remain healthy under stress. Call it resiliency. Right now, your company is being tested on its psychological resiliency. A hardy culture can help with that. As a leader, this means demonstrating a strong sense of commitment, control, and challenge when responding to stressful circumstances. As a group, discuss mistake and failure in a positive way. As management, provide opportunities for constructive performance feedback on a fairly regular basis. And the hardest and most requested guidance during the pandemic - provide opportunities for socializing and interacting on the job and outside of work.
Dan Schawbel, an expert on the future of work, says it’s normal to feel lonely during work from home. Citing statistics from Gallup and his own studies, he makes a strong case that you are less likely to want a career at a company if the structure is an isolating work from home set up. The top anchor to wanting to actually BE at a company for any period of time are the friendly relationships that exist for someone. So how do you make that happen?
My conclusion over twelve years is that the best corporate culture is one that feels like a family. - Dan Schawbel
Intentional engagement is everything when it comes to remote culture. And things that can seem standard in a traditional office set up: improving role fit, establishing team connections, connecting roles to purpose - take on even greater meaning when there is separation and isolation. Letting that engagement be a source of structure, of focus and of two-way communication also helps drive productivity. it goes without saying that the main expenditure for most Profit and Loss statements is salary. Why then would you ignore any factors that influence how your team views its company and its performance together? Culture is that factor - why not optimize it?
A great analogy of business culture was given. Two fish are swimming along one morning. An old fish swims by and says, “Good morning boys, how’s the water?” The younger fish swim on, before one turns to the other and says, “Wait a minute. What’s water?” In business, the culture is the water. You are either aware of its presence or unaware. The question becomes, “Is your current employee engagement strategy helping the flow of that water or slowing it down?”