Moving to hybrid work can be a positive move for your company
How can you stay connected with work and colleagues in a world where we spend 65 per cent less time in offices than before the pandemic?
Two-plus years into the pandemic, many leaders worry that remote and hybrid work are undermining their organisations’ culture. Their concerns aren’t entirely misplaced: A 2022 global study by the research and advisory firm Gartner found that just 25 per cent of remote or hybrid knowledge workers feel connected to their company’s culture. But forcing employees back to the office is risky, as CEOs including Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon have discovered first-hand. Companies should take another tack.
“I find it ironic when leaders say they need to bring workers back to the office because of culture,” says Alexia Cambon, a research director in Gartner’s human resources practice and a principal author of the study. “They’re going to get the opposite of what they hope for. Instead of viewing hybrid work as a disruption to the cultural experience, leaders should see it as an opportunity to build culture differently.”
Culture can be evaluated on the basis of two components, Cambon explains: alignment (meaning that employees know what the culture is and believe that it is right for the firm) and connectedness (they identify with and care about the culture). A Gartner survey of more than 4500 knowledge workers and 200 HR leaders showed that in-office mandates drove connectedness sharply down. Among employees with “radical flexibility” (defined as considerable freedom over location, schedule, work volume, team and projects), 53 per cent reported a high degree of connectedness, whereas just 18 per cent of those with low flexibility did so.
That’s important, the research shows, because more-connected workers perform at a higher level than others (by as much as 37 per cent) and are 36 per cent more likely to stay with the organisation. In another Gartner survey, half of knowledge workers said they would jump ship if their company rescinded their Covid-era flexibility. “Some CEOs may think that workers will grumble a bit but eventually habituate to a full-time return,” Cambon says. “Without a sense of connectedness, though, they have nothing to stop them from going to a less rigid company.”
Before the pandemic, firms tended to focus their culture-building efforts on alignment, trusting that connectedness would occur more or less by osmosis. “Leaders hoped that the way offices were designed and decorated and the frequent interactions among workers would foster an emotional connection with the organisation,” Cambon says. That approach had limitations even before the pandemic, she adds, and it is obviously insufficient in a world where employees spend 65 per cent less time in offices than they did before the pandemic.
The researchers suggest three strategies for driving connectedness among hybrid.
1. SHIFT HOW YOU DIFFUSE CULTURE
Managers often worry that remote workers’ productivity will suffer because of interruptions and distractions at home. In fact just the opposite happens: People often have more time for deep work, and productivity soars. This points to a valuable opportunity for employers to instil culture through daily tasks. “When you’re home, you have a more intimate relationship with work,” Cambon says. “Every time you engage in a task, you should see the corporate culture reflected in it.” Leaders should start by auditing the firm’s work processes to make sure they are compatible with the intended culture, the researchers suggest. “Say you want your firm to be innovative, forward-thinking and fast-paced,” Cambon says. “If your methodologies are bureaucratic and your systems have constant technical glitches, that will undermine the culture.”
Companies should help employees see that their value comes from the role they perform, not their physical location. For example, Virgin Money, a financial-services company, identifies its call centre workers as the “voice of the company”. Employees use an app to pinpoint what they most value in their work and then talk with their managers about how to adjust their roles to reflect those priorities. Companies should also encourage teams to set the rhythms for how work gets done rather than operate under manager-directed norms.
2. EMOTIONAL PROXIMITY, NOT PHYSICAL
The view that in-office interactions sustain culture confuses physical proximity with the more important sensation of emotional proximity, the researchers argue. “Physical proximity is being in the same space as another individual – being seen,” they write. “Emotional proximity is being of importance to others – feeling seen.” One survey showed that emotional proximity increased employees’ connectedness to their workplace culture by 27 per cent, while physical proximity had no impact.
Because remote and hybrid employees have fewer workplace interactions, each exchange makes a stronger impact. That heightens the imperative to identify and remove toxic workers, especially those in positions of influence. It also means that companies should refrain from requiring people to attend meetings unless they’re truly needed. The more employees feel that their contributions are valuable, the more connected to the culture they become.
Finally, leaders can create moments of emotional proximity by helping remote employees see how their work connects to the company mission. TBS, a pharmaceutical company based in Japan, uses role-play techniques during virtual onboarding to help people build an emotional connection to the firm from the start. New hires are assigned a medical condition that can be treated by a TBS drug and are asked to behave as a patient would. Someone assigned a gastrointestinal disorder, for example, would be pinged frequently for a bathroom break, thus simulating the inconvenience and discomfort patients endure. New employees also interview patients about how TBS offerings have improved their quality of life. It’s not about heaping praise on people, says Cambon. “It’s about ensuring that employees understand the value of their work to the organisation and beyond.”
3. FOSTER MICROCULTURES.
Multinationals have long faced the challenge of creating a strong corporate culture while also allowing local microcultures to thrive. With hybrid work splintering workforces into more-autonomous cells, all companies must now strike that balance. The research suggests that leaders should favour somewhat devolved control: Survey respondents reported that team-level experiences increased connectedness substantially more than enterprisewide initiatives did. Royal DSM, a Dutch health and nutrition company, now treats the culture as a flotilla of independently piloted ships rather than a single tanker. “The company provides the flotilla with guidance to sail in the right direction, but it does not prescribe the norms and behaviours aboard each boat,” the researchers write. The pandemic has radically changed how employees experience corporate culture, and firms must embrace the new reality. “By relying less on osmosis to drive connectedness and more on intentionality,” the researchers write, “leaders will see outsized impact on performance and intent to stay.”
Over the course of the pandemic, almost all the 6500 global associates of Acushnet – the parent company of golf brands Titleist and FootJoy – were told not to come in to work, and manufacturing shut down. The decision to focus on health and safety was easy, says chief people officer Brendan Reidy. Determining how and when people should return was much harder. Reidy spoke about how Acushnet’s strong culture embraces hybrid work arrangements.
How did you decide to reopen?
“Shortly after the shutdown, we experienced a huge uplift in business as people flocked to outdoor recreation. The question became: How do we keep our associates safe while meeting our customers’ growing needs? Our manufacturing operations reopened in accordance with local and state guidelines and when we could ensure a safe work environment. As for our office-based associates, we have always empowered our leaders around the world to make decisions in the context of their local businesses. So as things began to improve, we let them use their own judgment about associates’ returns, as long as they were in accordance with global health and safety guidelines. We determined at the corporate level that our future was with hybrid work.”
How do you define ‘hybrid’?
“Our goal is a productive, engaged and passionate workforce and a workplace that encourages meaningful collaboration. We’re not designing things so that associates will bump into each other in the hall; we’re designing them so that groups come together for specific types of tasks. You can share a prototype of a shoe remotely, but at a certain point team members need to hold the shoe and feel the leather and so on. Every company is different. But hybrid doesn’t mean business as usual except with only half the associates present. You need to create a new reality where each in-person interaction is intentional and collaboration can happen more effectively. That’s better than any water cooler chats ever were.”
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