PARTNER: SALESFORCE

Every business culture is composed of two parts, and they’re not always equal.

One part is the aspects of culture that are developed and actively promoted by the company’s leadership. This is usually based upon the business’s core values.

The other part is the culture that emerges organically, over longer periods of time, and is influenced by the attitudes and lived experiences of employees themselves.

In the end, company culture can be defined as the norms and behaviours that become part of the experience of working there – and, perhaps as importantly, a key factor in the experience a business delivers to its customers.

Over the past few years, global events have transformed the nature of work in such a way that business leaders may need to reassess the state of their internal culture, and to ensure that their values are in line with what employees expect and need.

Technology has made it possible to work successfully from anywhere, whether it’s the comfort of an employee’s home, a coffee shop or a traditional office. Companies are recognizing as a result that they can pivot from the concept of a physical “head office” to a digital HQ, where they use the tools available to them to operate and manage people in a much more flexible manner.

If you need some ideas on how to go about this, here are a few exercises and experiments that might be worth a try:

Before hybrid work, it was not uncommon for organizations to arrange a periodic “off site” meeting. The best off-site events have been a way to develop and reinforce the culture by offering experiences that promote bonding among team members and departments.

This could be done through a series of video calls with remote or hybrid employees, or even by creating a designated channel in Slack. Rather than treat this as a one-off, think about what would happen if the off-site meeting was ongoing – an organic conversation between leadership and the team using digital channels. You could drive engagement by asking targeted questions, but also playing games or asking fun quiz-style questions to nurture relationships.

Seeing people in person regularly meant that we were all witness to what other staff did all day. Hybrid work has meant some people don’t necessarily see what those on their team or in other departments are up to, other than when they formally connect in a virtual meeting.

Try this exercise: identify some of your more engaged employees and reach out to them. Ask them to write a “day in the new life” based on how they tackle their jobs now that they’re not wasting hours commuting. Encourage them to give a timeline of their average workday and the key sorts of milestones or habits that tend to play out. This might be when you discover employees have developed a mindfulness practice, that they play a sport on their lunch hour or learn that they dedicate spare time to volunteer work and taking care of their family. Share the results with the rest of the team. It will deepen the understanding of new norms among distributed colleagues, and might make some of them feel less alone.

Even if a company writes out their values and puts them on a plaque somewhere, not everyone reads it. As you fine-tune the way you articulate your values, you need employees to live them out – even if they’re working far from where you are.

This can be gamified and made more fun by starting a regular practice that’s akin to a scavenger hunt. Suggest to your teams that they call out their colleagues’ behaviours and actions when they clearly speak to the values you’ve outlined. Have prizes to make this a habit among everyone across the business. It will serve as a way to go beyond the values spelled out in a vision statement and infuse them directly into the culture.

Hybrid work culture can be a healthy, affirming, inclusive culture – it’s just a matter of business leaders setting the right intentions and trying a variety of approaches to continue developing it.