How to Protect Your Company's Culture While Working Remotely

Imagine you’re in a meeting room, sitting across from someone for half an hour with neither of you ever making eye contact. Not even once.

As the social creatures that we are, this should sound unsettling.

Human eye contact tells us what the other person is looking at. What they’re looking at suggests what they’re interested in, which, in turn, tells us what they want. If we know what they want, then we can predict how they’re going to behave. And knowing how they’re going to behave means we can cooperate with them.

Removing the ability to make eye contact with our colleagues then, due to talking on zoom calls while working remotely, shouldn’t bode well for efficient cooperation and the smooth running of a company.

And yet, while the lack of eye contact is just one of many challenges employees have grappled with over the past year or so, there seems to have been a significant uplift in the levels of cooperation across many organizations that simply flies in the face of such expectations.

I believe the reason for this lies in a strong and positive company culture.

So, what does a strong company culture look like?

Over the last few months, I, along with many others, have been fortunate to witness first-hand the power of a strong and positive company culture and what it can help achieve. But what does such a culture look like?

Many companies formulate lists of values they claim to live by. These might include qualities such as integrity, leadership, innovation, accountability, and teamwork. Creating lists of qualities, though, is only addressing half the problem. The easier half of the problem at that. The challenge is to live and breathe them.

Indeed, what a company’s culture really looks like is reflected in the unwritten signals and repeated moments of human interaction that embody these formal principles and connect each employee to another. What’s more, for the culture to be strong, all teams and individuals, from the top down, need to exemplify them and carry out each task with them in mind.

For this reason, working remotely can certainly pose a potential threat to this culture as opportunities to reflect these signals and moments are greatly reduced. Without these constant cues, which are usually absorbed subconsciously when walking around the office, it’s easy to forget what these values and traditions look like and what behaviors are expected.

And yet, it is at this very moment that a company’s real work culture is most crucial if efficient cooperation and business continuity are to occur. Remote working puts a company’s culture to the test and demands proof of it.

So how can you ensure your company withstands the test of remote working?

To ward off the potential of employees disengaging from a company’s culture, it's paramount to understand what qualities drive that company culture in the first place and ensure that moments are created that give employees the opportunity to express them.

Understood like this, there’s no reason why these qualities cannot be expressed just as clearly over a zoom call as they do in person. That’s why it’s so important to maintain these interactions throughout the day and make time for regrouping with team-mates either one-on-one or in small groups.

That’s where the cliché, but overwhelmingly powerful, 'team happy hours’ can help.

Over the past 6 months, the Payoneer Content Team has come together at the end of each week for a virtual hangout to chat and bond during the traditional office ‘happy hour’. However, as we are no longer bound to a physical location, we’ve been able to have a range of special guests join us who, ordinarily, would never have been able to make it. This has provided the opportunity to bond with colleagues, and external guests, from all over the world.

Of course, we may have had meetings with some of these colleagues during the week but inviting them as a special guest to a more relaxed environment puts the relationship into a very different context. Indeed, it’s a context that allows for the company’s culture to shine through.

So, if you’re looking for a new way to protect and maintain your company’s values and work culture, go ahead and invite some lesser-known colleagues to your next virtual happy hour. Here’s a small preview of the fun you could have: 

Featured image taken from: https://www.netmotionsoftware.com/blog/mobility/the-most-frustrating-things-about-working-remotely

Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2015/11/12/corporate-culture-matters-says-new-study/