Building A Powerful Workplace Culture Remotely
Company culture is something businesses know is important but have a hard time defining and strategizing over. While culture can be hard to draw clear boundaries around, researchers and consultants alike consistently link company culture to performance and business success.
With many companies now permanently adopting a fully-remote or hybrid workplace, leaders need to think about how their culture can be maintained and improved with these new physical parameters. Behind the boundaries of our screens, emails and chat software, it’s hard to see and understand all the interactions and emotions taking place. That’s why it’s even more important to create clarity and visibility for remote teams into what is and is not part of your company culture.
In this article
What is company culture
Let’s talk about what culture isn’t for a second. Company culture is not free snacks and motivational posters. Nor is it ping pong tables and meme channels in Slack.
Companies often attempt to build culture by presenting their core values to employees. This can be a starting point. However, most times little more follows. The subtle implication here is that culture is a top-down approach, like a mission statement. While leadership does have a huge role to play, culture is not something that can be delegated. The influences over culture come from all directions and requires voluntary buy-in from all employee levels to make it work.
So what is it? Culture is multidimensional and intentional. Overall, culture is the common sharing of practices, norms, beliefs, and values. A clear culture functions as a guidebook of behaviours dictating how people interact with each other and make decisions. Having a strong company culture increases employee engagement and performance.
Why is culture important?
Culture affects every fiber of an organization and has been consistently correlated to strong financial performance. Studies show that culture is a driving force behind the engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity of employees. Below are eye-opening statistics on the impact culture has across the employee life cycle.
ATTRACTING TOP TALENT
Company culture is one of the top factors job seekers look for when considering job opportunities, and 86% of job seekers say they avoid companies with a bad reputation.
46% of job seekers cite workplace culture is a top priority when choosing a company and 47% cite that poor company culture is the driving reason for them looking for work.
35% of workers say they would decline the perfect job if they felt the company culture wasn’t a good fit.
PERFORMANCE
Studies have shown that companies with a strong culture and happy employees out performed competition by 20%.
Highly engaged teams show increases of 21% in productivity and 22% in profitability compared to peers.
Companies with strong cultures have seen a 4x increase in revenue growth.
RETENTION
Employees who don’t like their organization’s culture are 24% more likely to quit.
73% of professionals have left a job because they did not like the company culture.
How To Build A Powerful Company Culture Remotely
FULFILL ON THE BASIC NEEDS OF REMOTE WORK
One of the first opportunities to show your team that they are supported is by ensuring they have everything they need to do their job remotely. While it sounds obvious, 46% of employees said they feel their employers are still falling behind with tech needs. Due to this, 70% of remote employees reported using their own funds to purchase remote work technology, spending an average of $381.
So what can companies do? Not everyone is missing the same equipment, and companies have come up with flexible solutions. Google, for example, allows employees to expense up to $1,000 worth of work-from-home gear to help with this need. Similarly, the company Feather gives their employees a $100 monthly credit that can be used on office supplies, food, hardware or up to 25% of a Wi-Fi bill.
The key here is to make sure your remote employees have what they need to do their jobs effectively and minimize technical disruptions.
ACT WHEN ACTIONS OR DECISIONS DO NOT FOLLOW THESE CORE VALUES
Having a presentation that clarifies core values is still beneficial. In fact, one of the best known examples of this is Netflix’s Culture: Freedom & Responsibility deck. The important thing is to ensure these values are consistently demonstrated in business decisions and day-to-day conduct. And if they are not, it is up to everyone - especially leaders - to help call out and correct misalignments.
But what happens when employees do not follow these core values? If you don’t think this is a problem affecting your organization, consider this alarming statistic: 43% of remote workers reported that they experienced workplace bullying (which is even higher than what was reported by non-remote workers at 30%). Bullying in this context was defined as repeated mistreatment, abusive conduct, threatening, intimidating, humiliating, work sabotage or verbal abuse.
It goes without saying that whenever workplace bullying is witnessed, it should be addressed immediately. However, there are also less obvious culture contradictions that occur daily.
For example, if an employee tries to gossip with you, intervene and help them understand why that isn’t respectful to the people being discussed. If you witness a pattern of Robert interrupting Jane on video calls, make Robert aware or consider saying “I’d like to pause for a second and hear what Jane thinks.” Or if your company consistently plans socials after work hours, provide feedback that this may not be inclusive of parents who have to pick up and care for their kids.
Correctional actions do not need to be confrontational. They just need to be respectful and clear intentioned. It is critical that managers and executives lead by example in this area. “Keeping out of things” is not being impartial, it’s being complicit. If employees do not see leaders speaking up, they won’t feel confident to do so themselves, and instead will interpret behaviour contrary to the goal culture as permissible. With remote employees in particular, it is harder to see what happens behind the screens. So be mindful to create visibility around what is and is not permitted within your company culture.
MAKE MENTAL HEALTH A CLEAR PRIORITY
We all know that the pandemic has taken a huge toll on everyone’s mental health and worklife balance. In fact, an Owl Labs survey revealed that 88% of people who switched jobs in 2021 did so to achieve a better work life balance or (87%) lower their stress.
Parents in particular have had additional layers of stress, such as the rollercoaster of remote schooling and and at-home child care. That’s why in May 2020, Zillow introduced 10 fully paid days of caregiver leave to allow parents to care for their loved ones.
To help with employees’ mental health, Starbucks now provides all U.S. employees - and eligible family members - access to 20 sessions a year with a mental health therapist or coach. This is in addition to unlimited access to the self-care apps available through their health partner, Lyra Health.
Providing flexibility and resources to help with mental health are very important. However, stress-alleviators should not be in substitute of actions addressing the root causes of workplace stress. The surprising reality is that remote employees are more likely than in-office employees to report working over 50 hours a week, contributing to high overwork and burnout.
The rapid change businesses faced during the pandemic created a snowball of urgency that has grown into this widespread culture of being “always on,” making it difficult for remote employees to unplug. It’s time to unravel that. Managers will be a big part of this correction by enforcing their remote teams to respect work hour boundaries and by setting realistic timelines to complete work. Let’s dig into this further on how managers can support their teams.
BUILD TRUST AND SEEK FEEDBACK FROM EMPLOYEES
The best solutions start with feedback. By now, you’ve already heard how important it is to have consistent one-on-ones with remote employees to gauge how they’re feeling and what they’re working on. We believe the 4 core values outlined by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) are excellent guidelines for having more impactful and insightful conversations.
Listen to understand: This focuses on the idea that there are multiple levels of information to tune into during conversations. While there is the obvious factual information, there are also emotions, implications, and unstated objections that require active listening and asking thoughtful questions. Without more limited nonverbal communication at hand, remote managers will have to embrace the habit of asking more questions.
Ask Powerful Questions: The goal is to create a mutual understanding of the facts and uncover hidden feelings. Asking a non-directive question such as “How do you want your team to feel when you announce the new initiative?” can spark more reflection than asking “When are you announcing the new initiative?”
Challenge & Support: Challenge can stress-test ideas and uncover unexamined assumptions, while providing support assures people they have been heard. The ongoing mix of challenge and support encourages honesty without triggering defensiveness.
Establish next steps and accountability: Being heard isn’t enough. Follow through is required to build and sustain trust with employees. Once you align on what the best course of action is to address work-related or stress-related issues, outline together what the steps, timelines, and assigned responsibilities are. Remember that your remote employees can’t see what you’re doing at your desk and vice versa. This practice helps to set clear expectations, accountability, and reduces stressful feelings of uncertainty.
What we’re seeing in the Canadian & US Market
While building culture with remote employees can be different, it is equally (if not more) important to deliberately do so. We know how important culture is to attracting and retaining top talent. More and more, we are seeing candidates making decisions on what companies they work with based on culture over compensation. Candidates consistently ask what companies are doing to help their employees through this time. We’re also hearing that many of the underlying reasons candidates are for looking for a change in the first place stem from workplace culture issues.
In the words of Peter Drucker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
At Ari Agency, we take culture seriously. As part of our recruitment process, we conduct a deep dive to understand your current and aspirational culture. This is an incredibly important step that allows us to find you the all-star team member who fits and enhances your culture. It also equips us with the selling points needed to differentiate you from competing brands.
If you’re looking to bring on new impactful members for your remote team, contact us today to see how we can help.
