Businesses, both small and large, have embraced work-from-home setups. According to Forbes, "25% of all professional jobs will be remote by the end of 2022." With all the positive points of working from home for both employees and employers, it's safe to say remote work is here to stay.
While it is great not having to commute to work everyday, it does leave some people missing the traditional office interactions. With everything happening virtually, how do office dynamics translate to the online world? No, having an office culture isn’t a thing of the past. You can still set up a great work culture even with a remote team. Read on to see how you can create one with a remote team.
Your company’s culture should be the reflection of your company’s goals and values. As a group of people continues working together, they start sharing the same common set of beliefs, behavior, and assumptions, Bloomberg explains. The more people spend time together, the work culture inevitably develops.
Work culture is set by leadership. It is important to have people in managerial roles who instill healthy company values. Other influences like workplace practices, systems, and policies also have a heavy hand in how the culture developed since these determine how employees perform and move in the business. The employees themselves are also big contributors to the workplace culture. Their personalities and values collimate with their colleagues’.
When a company has a positive workplace culture, it has a significant impact on the happiness and satisfaction of employees. Which, in turn, encourages better workplace retention, and higher employee engagement, as well as promotes productivity and efficiency in teams. Having this positive feedback loop will only cement the company culture and attract talent into the organization that shares and upholds the same values as your team does.
A negative work environment causes a domino effect. Allowing the negativity brew within the workplace, it can quickly erode the core values of the company and make work feel draining. Employee turnover rates will be higher, workflow of the company will be staggered, and the morale of the company will become deflated. It's crucial to the ecosystem within the workplace to identify the source of the negativity and deal with it accordingly.
While employees now may not be in an office like in the traditional workplace of the past, focusing on the other pillars of workplace culture can still develop a culture in which people can thrive. After all, the company’s culture is more than just the office perks and fun little employee activities. Focus on your team’s mission, values, and goals, and go from there.
Lend an ear to your employees and listen to their feedback. No one is as intimately immersed in the work culture as your employees. Get on a call with them one by one and as a team. Discuss the kind of culture you all want to develop. What can help everyone thrive and propel the team forward? It is important to foster honest and open lines of communication so you digest what your team has to say on a consistent basis, and vice versa.
To reinforce a good work culture, have policies in place that support it. Assess your current policies and see what is missing or can be improved. Consider the input of your team when creating or amending these policies. Also make sure that the policies are up to date and compliant with the current work setups of everyone involved. This eliminates the possibility of doubt.
It is important to have all of these policies in writing so it is easier to refer back to when the need arises. And just as equally important, have these policies be accessible to everyone. Save it in a folder in your team’s cloud storage that’s convenient to find or pin it in your company’s communication platform.
Your systems and processes need to be conducive to promoting efficiency and enriching your work culture. Ensure that these systems and processes are updated for your remote setup. Keep the company’s values at the core and align your systems and processes to those said values.
Using the lines of communication you’ve established in the beginning, be transparent about your systems, workplace benefits, and other processes that are of interest to the employees. Ask and always be open to your team’s feedback as well. Taking in their ideas can motivate them and possibly even help create an even more positive work environment.
Your work culture is first and foremost about your people. Encourage, nurture, and develop good people in your team. Support them by reinforcing the good values of the work culture and taking action and improving those values that no longer serve your team. It all boils down to creating a culture and environment that lifts employees so they can perform their best.
Listen to your employees and provide them with the proper channels to give you their honest feedback. In order to set the groundwork for the positive feedback loop within the workplace, you must open the floodgates of communication & let the employees flow through and liven the environment with their individuality.
