Digital based communications are the only way to support company culture during this lockdown, and many companies are falling short.

The lockdown has been a moment in time to observe what happens to company culture when employees are unable to visit their place of work. The values and behaviours expected by an organisation is normally reinforced by people observing the physical behaviours of leaders, their peers, having water cooler conversations, overhearing other conversations.

Just when business leaders are faced with so much uncertainty, they have also had their ability to communicate severely impacted. In other moments of crisis in my lifetime, (e.g. 2008 financial collapse) the leaders were in the room, and the good ones adopted a more casual and frequent sharing of information, whilst working hard to pull together a new strategy and shared narrative about the path forward. In the current crisis, this absence of certainty, and fluid communication, has to be replicated on digital platforms. 

Full disclosure - I work for a digital creative learning agency who specialise in creating bespoke learning courses. We make them from scratch each time, to authentically incorporate all the cultural norms of how each partner organisation communicates. We decided to take a snapshot poll across a wide audience of employees recruited anonymously on LinkedIn. Focusing on how people were feeling about the return to work, incredibly 60% said they had yet to receive any support from their employer about the issues that most concerned them. 

The survey found that people are desperate for more information about new health and safety protocols, flexibility to work from home and business performance. The greatest disparity came from anxiety and stress, where only 13% of people said they were receiving any support, but 45% asking for help during the transition. This should be a massive wake up call to many businesses, as anxiety and stress are proven to get worse for most people unless given support. To get businesses back on track as lockdown eases, organisations need their staff at their most productive.

As mentioned, my company designs and produces learning experiences for workforces, using digital platforms in order to reach the most people possible, with the greatest possible impact. Consider how your company culture is under strain from stress, uncertainty, and weaker communications, and talk to us about creating bespoke digital communications to engage and educate your employees.

 We have written up the full findings of the survey on our website here.

Please leave your comments below, or get in touch at [email protected]