Consider how workplace culture influences your employees
There is no such thing as a culture-less organization. Culture happens regardless. The question is, are you being intentional about creating and maintaining a culture that enables you to achieve your goals, or are you just allowing the culture to shape itself? Let’s explore three aspects that influence your workplace culture:
Collaboration
You can craft how your organization collaborates, so be deliberate about it. In the remote working world, consider the technologies that can facilitate this. Platforms such as Slack and Microsoft Teams make it easy to have conversations in real time, audio, and video.
Are the systems that your organization uses as effective during remote work? Do they foster interdepartmental cooperation? If you’re aware of issues, consider creating cross-functional teams that could encourage better collaboration.
Competence
When people feel competent, appreciated, and connected, they are better able to iterate, innovate, and create. This is especially relevant now. Take stock of how competent your employees are feeling. Are they being trained, developed, coached? Make sure you continue ongoing conversations about their roles and responsibilities as well as training opportunities.
Have a conversation with employees whose role or responsibilities have needed to be tweaked or shifted during the pandemic. Seek them out and ask them what they’ve learned, if it’s something that they enjoy, and if it’s something they would like to continue. Your goal is to find out if they’re enjoying the challenge and are feeling competent.
Appreciation
Research shows appreciation consistently ranks as one of the top influencers of workplace culture. Evaluate the recognition systems you have in place. Are they effective in the remote work environment? Share stories of the positive things employees are doing. This will reinforce the behavior that you want to continue to see.
Lisa Burke is a workplace improvement expert at Energage, a Philadelphia-based research and consulting firm that surveyed more than 2 million employees at more than 7,000 organizations in 2019. Energage is The Washington Post’s research partner for Top Workplaces.