How working remotely helps create a better culture
How to define culture
Working remotely - why it is good for your people
Working remotely - why it is good for your company
Working remotely - how it influences culture
How to define culture
First and foremost, what constitues a company culture? Other than a list of inspirational values on a poster on the wall in your company’s office, it’s a set of lived beliefs which you currently practice. In other words, those behaviours which are rewarded and therefore constitute the reality of how your business operates on a day-to-day basis.
For example, if equality is an aspired value but behaviour fostering equality isn’t currently rewarded, it’s not going to be a lived reality of your company and therefore part of its culture. Same goes for pretty much any other value you could think of, from integrity (probably no 1 when it comes to presence on office walls) to commitment to client’s success (my personal bullshit bingo winner).
Working remotely - why it is good for your people
While it is true that not everyone prefers working from home to going to the office (and so having a clear division between personal and professional life), there are massive personal benefits to remote working.
Firstly, it minimises waste of time and energy involved in commuting. Getting up early to catch that morning train is no longer a strain on our (limited) daily resource of willpower. This means we have extra willpower to use for work related challenges. Besides, being able to stay in bed that little bit longer is actually a big deal for most of us and influences productivity throughout the working day.
Secondly, remote working encourages fluidity between work and life management, which is massively helpful for most of us. A working mum at my company considers it the biggest perk of all that she can be a full time remote worker and pop into the office once a quarter for an unavoidable in-person meeting. Being at home means you can pick up a delivery, let in a plumber and do all those annoying little things that are normally a problem for office workers, as they happen throughout your day.
Isn’t it a distraction from work? Probably not more so than all the coffee machine or water cooler conversations. And the benefit of being able to fit more into your day is considerable.
Lastly, focus. Quite a few colleagues told me they work from home when they need to “bosh through stuff” without being distracted by the office banter or uninvited questions from others.
What if you actually like office banter? It’s easy enough to move it online. Ever since the lockdown started those of my team who enjoy a little social time meet at 11 am and 3 pm for a morning and an afternoon “natter session” on Google Hangouts. On top of this, we have a “coping circle” aimed at helping those who find it difficult to deal with pressures of a lockdown on their own.
Working remotely - why it is good for your company
In order to operate at their best, people need to feel trusted, particularly with how they manage personal resources, such as their own time and energy. In a remote working scenario those personal resources are placed in their hands.
While interviewing people for work at GrantTree, a company I started ten years ago, I heard almost on a daily basis how much candidates disliked being mistrusted in one of their previous jobs. It was crucial for their performance to feel the management essentially deems them capable of doing the job they were hired to do.
The good news for us all is that remote working makes it close to impossible to sustain counterproductive, fear driven behaviours such as micromanagement. Instead, it creates circumstances where trust in people can evolve, be tested and, hopefully, strengthened.
Taking all the personal benefits of working remotely into consideration, during times such as this you are likely to get more rested, less depleted and more focused people showing up for work. This must be nothing but great for business as long as you can help them remain motivated and connected to other members of the team and to the company’s purpose.
Working remotely - how it influences culture
If culture is a set of behaviours that are rewarded, remote working can and does encourage good, productive behaviours and can therefore contribute to a better culture.
And so, it creates circumstances where trust between people can be built and/or strengthened. It allows people to design their own schedule and to manage their time and energy more effectively compared to when they work from the office.
Douglas McGregor came up with so-called Theory X and Theory Y to do with human work motivation and management back in the 1950ties. According to the former, people are generally lazy and need to be controlled in order to perform. When it comes to the latter, people are naturally wired to do great work and only need the right encouraging environment that builds them up (rather than threatening them into high performance) in order to flourish. Whichever theory you believe in, you will find plenty of evidence in the workplace that you are right.
During this time, when working remotely is the national standard, gives us a unique opportunity to put Theory Y into practice. All that needs to be done is to treat your people as adults that are naturally keen to do great work simply because it makes them feel good. Simply expect them to do well and watch what happens and how your culture evolves as a result.
I talk more about culture in my upcoming book “Laid Bare: What The Business Leader Learnt From The Stripper”. Sign up here for presales and updates. Have a positive and productive lockdown!