A New Way of Working: On Purpose For a Purpose

A New Way of Working:?Reinforcing Culture and the Challenge of Balancing Baselines

The last 18-plus months have transformed the way many of us work, to say the least.?Millions of individuals who had been onsite in offices transitioned almost overnight to remote environments. This presented an enormous challenge for businesses and employees alike; however, I believe the challenges for business of “going remote” will be dwarfed by the challenges of adjusting to the new cultural and operating models that have been unleashed by the lessons learned from the pandemic. Put simply, I believe that business is about to face one of the greatest cultural shifts – and challenges – of the past 20 years. How leaders respond will set the course for success or failure.

I became CEO of UScellular in July of 2020. Running the fourth-largest wireless company in the U.S. is a career dream come true, but running a multi-billion-dollar enterprise entirely remotely in the middle of a pandemic was another matter. My biggest initial concern was remote productivity: would we get the work done? I quickly realized something that has been written about exhaustively – the level of productivity from our associates actually increased during the pandemic. Our teams were working harder than ever. My concern then shifted to remote coordination: how could we avoid isolated and misaligned efforts throughout the business? Again, my fears were unfounded – with the help of technology, creativity and initiative, our teams were partnering like never before. That shifted my focus to remote culture reinforcement, which remains my greatest concern. How do we reinforce what makes our company special? How can we continue to leverage our culture to retain top talent? How do we share our vision and values with our new associates? And, how do we prevent associates from burn-out?

I firmly believe that spending time together is critical if a corporate culture is not only going to endure, but also grow and evolve. Technology can facilitate meetings and enable collaboration, but it cannot replace those unique touchpoints that help achieve success: the chance meetings that drive innovation, the enthusiastic trainer that inspires new team members, and certainly not the hug (or air high-five) you give someone after they get promoted. So the fundamental question that we are facing is how to enable the right amount of in-person time for culture reinforcement, while acknowledging the productivity and coordination lessons learned from the pandemic.

I’m relatively new in my role, which means I spend a lot of time trying to learn from others. In all my conversations with other leaders, they have clearly acknowledged this growing dilemma – the fact that many talented associates enjoy the flexibility of remote work, while just as many managers believe it’s important to be together. Nearly everyone that I have heard from – with a few notable exceptions you may have read about – feels that some sort of hybrid approach makes sense, and it’s usually articulated as a certain number of days in the office – either X days a week at the discretion of the employee, or Y days a week at the directive of the manager. Although this sounds good in practice, I believe this sets you up for failure, because it comes down to a difference in “baselines” between managers and talent.

The pre-pandemic baseline for most managers was the standard five days a week in the office. This was certainly the case for UScellular. It was believed that associates needed to be present to be productive. To be fair, most companies introduced flexible work arrangements, but they were usually sparsely utilized and carried cultural baggage. Even if you believe your flexible work model was a success, you will most likely need to examine that arrangement in our post-pandemic world. As we cautiously return from the pandemic, most of the colleagues I speak with – wanting to be both progressive and flexible – are contemplating a new approach, asking employees to spend an average of three days per week onsite rather than five.

The problem is that many talented employees have completely reset their baseline during the pandemic. Most have been working entirely remotely without missing a beat. We’re working harder than ever, and results are generally strong. Consequently, the baseline for a growing number of employees has shrunk not to three days a week in the office, but to zero days. This disconnect between the management baseline (I’m going from five days a week to three…. I’m flexible and progressive!) and the talent baseline (I’ve been working at zero and excelling … why go back?) sets you up for massive cultural challenges, and the turnover and talent development challenges that come with it.

So how do we react as leaders to this challenge of mismatched baselines??I know I don’t have all the answers…I’m living through this in the moment like everyone else.?Next, I’ll describe how we’re tackling this challenge at UScellular, and introduce a new way of working – on purpose, for a purpose.

A New Way of Working:?Coming Together on Purpose for a Purpose

As noted, I believe one of the greatest cultural challenges for business of the past 20 years will be this mismatch in baseline expectations between leaders and talent as we return to the office after the pandemic.?Many companies are confident that cutting back the number of days employees spend onsite from five to, say, three, reflects the lessons learned during this virus year. But just as many employees, all of whom have been successfully working remotely for more than a year, now believe that there is no need to return to the office at all.

How leaders respond to this disconnect will set the course for success or failure.?So how do we react as leaders to this challenge of mismatched baselines??How can we enable the right amount of in-person time for culture reinforcement and social engagement, while acknowledging the productivity and coordination lessons learned from the pandemic??I can see two potentially wrong moves, and at least one potentially promising one.

The first wrong move, in my opinion, is to set up specific days for specific, mandated office attendance, and then celebrate your progressiveness and flexibility. This approach would take the form of an announcement that says, “We have heard your concerns and as a modern and progressive company, we are making changes. Instead of our old model of five days a week onsite, we’ll only work in the office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.” This assures that every other day, your teams will trudge to their car and reluctantly drive to the office, asking themselves why they need to fight traffic when they could do the same job and be more productive at home. You will likely see substantial turnover, while wondering why your talent doesn’t understand how progressive you are.

The other wrong move is to adopt a 100% remote model if that wasn’t your structure before the pandemic. This may result in near-term benefits in the form of retention and lower turnover, but drive long-term negatives as existing teams feel increasingly disconnected, new hires struggle to assimilate, innovation deteriorates, and culture stagnates. While I understand that some companies can thrive in an entirely remote model…I can tell you that our team at UScellular would struggle.

So how do you strike the right balance? I believe the solution can be found in adopting a purposeful approach to every in-person interaction. Spend time together “on purpose…for a purpose.”?At UScellular, we are instituting a program that calls for managers to design time for their teams to be together, but that every in-person interaction must be purposeful.?Time spent onsite must be built around purposeful events – training sessions, staff meetings, innovation breakfasts, happy hours – and not simply because it is a specific day of the week. Associates are required to attend the purposeful events, but are then free to choose where they want to do their individual work. We are redesigning our office space to facilitate these purposeful events, with enough capacity to welcome those associates who also prefer to do their day-to-day work in the office.

We believe that this approach will strike the right balance between culture reinforcement through in-person interactions, while giving our associates the flexibility they have justifiably earned.?An important note: this model can only succeed if you trust your individual managers to make the right choices based on the unique needs of their specific teams. Some customer service employees, for example, whose roles lend themselves to remote working, may only get together once a month for a training event, while our business development teams may be in the office nearly every day in order to drive the right degree of brainstorming and collaboration. ?

A blanket policy that applies to all teams cannot work, and leaders must be comfortable loosening the reins and decentralizing control; I acknowledge that this is a difficult challenge when paired against a statement like “the biggest cultural challenge of the past twenty years.”

Another important point:?if this model is to succeed, leaders must set the example when structuring purposeful events, and hold their managers accountable for the same. For example, I am asking my executive team to be in the office six days each month: every Monday for a staff meeting, coupled with same-day “coffee hours” when anyone can swing by to chat, along with two consecutive days of operational reviews in the middle of the month. I’ll be honest, this schedule feels light for me, but I can’t justify other purposeful events, so we’re starting with this, and we’ll adjust as needed.

This purposeful approach to in-person interaction requires managers to buy into the program, model appropriate behavior and trust their teams.?It will certainly have operational implications – from facilities planning to results measurement to leadership training and development.?It will also drive significant cultural change, particularly if your company has traditionally managed with a “butts in seats” operating model.?For us, we’ve found this is the only way we are comfortable with aligning the disparate baselines of management and talented associates. ?If we’re going to get serious about the challenge of culture and talent development in a post-pandemic world, we’re all going to need to change our approach…purposefully.