When we finally return to offices, how should we shape the workplace of the future?
Published by The Globe and Mail, May 17, 2021
Depending where you are in Canada, you may be thinking about the inevitable: the return to work outside the home. Some of us are really looking forward to it, but many are wondering what they will be going back to – and I am not talking about the physical workspace.
Whether employers like it or not, employees will be returning to a different culture than the one they left pre-pandemic. Basically, whatever culture they left is over, hard stop, no matter how progressive or traditional it was before.
Most culture changes are evolutionary, unless a bombshell like the pandemic occurs. Almost overnight, most white-collar jobs went from the regular office routine to working from home on video, frequently with the kids and pets around and everything closed. The pandemic has brought the single biggest change to the way we do work since the introduction of desktop computers, and it will shape aspects of culture for years to come.
Culture is the personality of an organization. It is the character of the employees: understanding their wants and needs in order for them to be engaged, focused, and therefore productive. Ultimately, it leverages people energy to execute on strategy. Over the last year, technology has been able to connect us around the daily aspects of our work, but it has limits in building culture when compared to the way culture is built in-person, through moments of more direct and personal engagement.
When we finally get back to the office, how do we encourage engagement in shaping the new culture?
First, reconsider the townhall and other all employee gatherings for information spreading. Most times, the most engaging part of a townhall is the free food. Although they bring people together, the messaging is too often one-way, and gathering hundreds of employees at once is not a good structure for conversation. Informing is not understanding or connecting. Instead, engaging is the key to generating understanding. I remember giving feedback to a president after a townhall, bringing to his attention that he spoke at a language level that many in the audience did not understand. His response to me was that it is more important that they just heard it, rather than understand it. Sadly, all that it accomplished was a “Blah, blah, blah” waste of time.
If you’re a leader who cares about culture (and all leaders should) start using listening circles to get a baseline on your company culture and draw on the wisdom of your people. If you’re unfamiliar with the process, these are smaller groups of 10 or so employees who come together to address a limited series of topical questions. The circle is led by a facilitator rather than the leader, whose role is to listen to what is being said. When done online, the leader turns off their camera, but is able to see and hear the engagement between the listening circle members. In person, they sit within earshot but not as part of the circle.
The results are almost always enlightening for the leader, generating ideas on how to better engage and understand what needs to be improved to build the culture they intend. Because the listening circles are usually constructed around groups of peers at the same organizational level, there is no threat of hierarchy, and leaders don’t dominate the discussion with prepared messages, or try to fill in awkward silences. This provides the very necessary level of psychological safety for your people to be open about what is good, bad or downright ugly about your current culture, and how parts of that can be fixed. Be clear that it’s not a gripe session: it’s a respectful and forward-looking conversation about how to be intentional in building the culture you need to execute the company’s strategy.
Related to this, leaders need to find ways to check in frequently about engagement, by actually engaging. Instead of a big annual engagement survey, consider probing specific aspects of your culture journey by using smaller, more frequent surveys that are tied to a specific action. For example, if you’ve just adjusted your approach to flex time, don’t wait several months to ask what people think: ask the question sooner, and request feedback. This might also be done better as a series of leader conversations with their teams, where there tends to be a higher level of trust based on day-to-day interactions.
When we get back together in person, use it as an opportunity to engage employees by empowering them to shape the company’s culture: not from what they left in 2020, but where they are now and building on that.
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One Response
Great article. I agree that the culture for any organization has been greatly impacted by this pandemic. It’s been interesting to hear from colleagues that have really enjoyed the time to work from home as it has provided a better work/life balance for them, especially for those that have young kids. However they do miss the social interaction at the office.
To give a different perspective, for someone like myself that has had a home office for 13 years the “home work office” culture has had a few impacts too. The first one is having people home when you are used to having the house by yourself. That has meant sharing wifi access which was challenging at the beginning until we increased our level of service. Plus being told you are loud on conference calls. Oh well, too bad. My office, not yours.
More distractions with kids and a wife at home is another one, which meant telling everyone to not to bother me when I’m on a video call unless you have lost a limb or the house is on fire. As well, don’t flush the toilet as the plumbing is directly above my basement office. I think the last thing people want to hear on a video call is the sound of gushing water.
Pre-covid I did a lot of traveling, but technology (Microsoft teams, zoom, etc) has provided the benefit of connecting with people from across the country that I’m still able to achieve the same business results. As we return back to work, I would imagine I’ll still have to travel but it will be less frequent. Bonus: more time to golf.
Lastly, I think the biggest impact and the most positive one has been feeling part of a larger team. With my job being in the field, I would normally fly into Toronto for a few days for a head office meeting. Quickly meet so and so who’s in charge of blah, blah blah and never know if I would ever see them again. Since COVID, our company communications has drastically improved. We started with daily and weekly video calls at the beginning and now have them once a month for larger teams and once a week for smaller teams. It may seem like too much communication, but for someone in the field it’s been great to connect up with head office colleagues and see who they are and build up a connection with them. I know Youri leads our Social Media team and his go to karaoke song is Stayin Alive by the Bee Gees. My greatest fear with back to work is that this will all end. However I have been rest assured by our senior team that we will still continue on with these calls as they have seen the same benefits as well.