Strengthen Culture During Remote Work

Yes, remote and hybrid work settings provide many benefits. Yet they also have their challenges. How do you maintain and strengthen your corporate culture when people are not consistently seeing each other face-to-face? Communications have changed, but the need to connect has not.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast!

There is a famous Peter Drucker quote that says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” According to The Alternative Board, “The culture of your company always determines success regardless of how effective your strategy may be. Culture isn’t about comfy chairs and happy hours at the office. Rather, it’s more about the ways your employees act in critical situations, how they manage pressure and respond to various challenges, and how they treat partners and customers, and each other.”

What is Organizational Culture? According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), “An organization’s culture is based on values derived from basic assumptions about the following:

• HUMAN NATURE. Are people inherently good or bad, mutable or immutable, proactive or reactive?

• THE ORGANIZATION’S RELATIONSHIP to its environment. How does the organization define its business and its constituencies?

• APPROPRIATE EMOTIONS. Which emotions should people be encouraged to express, and which ones should be suppressed?

• EFFECTIVENESS. What metrics show whether the organization and its individual components are doing well?

SHRM states that “Organizational culture can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including leadership behaviors, communication styles, internally distributed messages, and corporate celebrations.”

Practical Pointers for Strengthening Culture

Here are tips for maintaining culture even with remote and hybrid work arrangements. I have used these in my public and private sector organizations. Other ideas have come from my “CIO Roundtable” group. When I was the State of Colorado CIO and Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT), we moved 95% of our 1,000 OIT employees to remote work when the pandemic hit. We followed many of these approaches.

1. COMMUNICATE OFTEN, VARY INTERACTIONS. It’s important to create many times for people to communicate. Hold “All Hands” meetings regularly. Things change quickly, so it’s important to reaffirm the company’s direction and the importance of the work. Encourage managers to hold regular meetings with their teams and one-on-one with their staff members. Vary the format and agenda of large meetings with audio, web, and video conferencing.

Use internal organizational chats, texts, emails, and plain old phone calls. Distribute a newsletter on a regular basis. Promote drop-in office hours. Invite a dozen staff members to “coffee or tea with me.” Have fun. At OIT, we had theme days where we wore hats, cool sunglasses, or school colors.

3. ASK FOR FEEDBACK. Conduct surveys about how employees are doing. These can be short online questionnaires asking employees if they need equipment and support. Make changes from this feedback. Consider a feedback portal where staff can easily and confidentially submit suggestions. Make sure someone responds.

4. HAVE IN-PERSON ENCOUNTERS. People appreciate having a chance to meet face-to-face. In a hybrid work situation, have people come in on the same days.  Quarterly Happy Hours and/or an Annual Picnic can strengthen in-person time. Take professional headshots so people use those with virtual meetings. Have a theme. Provide a small gift like a T-shirt or water bottle.

5. CELEBRATE. Recognition goes a long way. Set up “culture” or “values” awards. At OIT, we gave quarterly values awards to employees who worked according to our values. Even a thank-you goes a long way.

Summary

Remote and hybrid work are here to stay. Pay attention to and strengthen the company culture. How? Continue to communicate. Interact in many ways. Ask for feedback. Hold in-person gatherings at times. Celebrate and reward progress. Why? Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Theresa M. Szczurek, Ph.D. is a tech and cybersecurity-savvy C-level executive, 3x tech entrepreneur, Certified Management Consultant (CMC®), and Certified Corporate Director (NACD.DC) who is the Managing Director of Government Sourcing Solutions. She is the former State of Colorado Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Colorado CIO of the Year.  She researched, authored, and speaks about her best-selling book Pursuit of Passionate Purpose: Success Strategies for a Rewarding Personal and Business Life. 

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