Organizations are perhaps missing out on sustaining office culture in the short run owing to COVID-19 enforced shift to remote work. Notwithstanding that, they can usher in a tech-enabled evolution of a new paradigm in how distributed teams collaborate.
Unprecedented as it was, when the lockdown was announced and all or most employees were told to work from home, organizations put in their best to seamlessly transition to remote work. They ensured that digitalization that takes years was done in a span of weeks. While productivity increased, what was most concerning is the impact it was going to have on the office culture.
The global drug manufacturer AbbVie has started asking its teams to return to the office citing it as a “critical part of our collaborative cross-functional culture.†As per CNBCOpens a new window , several employees are not yet comfortable with traveling to work and working with their colleagues in a physical workplace. Even the employees who have been able to work from home effectively, are being asked to return.
It is important to understand the correlation that organizations tend to project between a physical office space and their work culture. Organizations believe that a large part of their workforce located in one place, creating and practicing certain elements that define culture, such as open communication, collaboration and connection, can be easier.
Is A Physical Workspace Needed For A Sustainable Culture?
Apparently so. It seems this is an emerging trend across other workplaces throughout the U.S. Employees are starting to believe that companies value their profits more than employee safety and health. Apart from AbbVie, Epic Systems which is an electronic medical records provider has also asked its employees to return to work to sustain its culture. On the other side, companies like NovartisOpens a new window have announced their flexible work-from-home policies and said that their workers can return on-site only voluntarily, i.e., if they want to.
What is the connection between an office and the culture that an organization wants to foster? The distributed workforce has thrown up this challenge for organizations as they try to navigate through challenges in sustaining the culture that usually takes decades to build.
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Technology Can Help In Culture Building
It goes without saying that replacing the cultural elements that emanate from a workplace is not entirely possible, although technology can be used efficiently to build and sustain culture without compromising the safety of the employees.
Creates stronger communication channels
One of the building blocks of culture is a strong communication strategy that is followed specifically by leaders. Technology has provided leaders and managers with more channels to communicate with employees no matter how dispersed they are in their location. With a robust tool, leaders can reiterate and ensure that the values as well as beliefs that drive the culture are regularly shared. Due to technology even the frequency of sharing the right messages can increase, which might not have been possible with physical meetings. It is also important to note that with the use of technology, information reaches the employees immediately, especially when there are big changes. This creates higher transparency and prevents rumors from getting circulated due to limited or unequal distribution of the same information.
Lays higher emphasis on collaboration and engagement
When employees come into the office, the level of team collaboration and engagement that exists is on another level altogether. However, given how easily these can get impacted in a virtual setup, companies end up making more effort towards these areas than they would have otherwise done. These aspects are big drivers of culture. For example, companies like Ford, Google and so on, are using gamification to build company culture. Through the use of online games companies are being able to emphasize on their core values as well as train staff more effectively. In current times, technology has become a huge enabler of flexible work without impacting the performance. That flexibility might not have been part of the culture earlier but irrespective of what organizations want, the talent pool clearly wants this approach towards flexible work even in the post pandemic world.
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Organizations need to remember that while physical workplaces are vehicle for corporate culture, they are not the only one. Technology can play a crucial role as a tool to create, as well as sustain the culture of an organization.