Organisational Culture......

I recently set out to read around and research the lively topic of organisational culture.?I use the term ‘organisation’ as this covers corporates, government departments, SME’s, not for profits and social enterprise, rather than being limited to ‘corporate culture’.???

Almost every organisation calling their employees to ‘return to the office’ cites the culture as one of the key reasons that knowledge workers should get back to spending the majority of their working hours in the office.??

So it must be important, right???

Wikipedia helped me out with a neat definition of organisational culture: “Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behaviour and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.”

However, Stephen Shedlezsky puts it more succinctly: Culture = Values x Behaviours

As no organisation outwardly sets out to impose poor or negative values, the development and maintenance of organisational culture can therefore logically be traced directly to the behaviours of the employees.?To quote Colin Newlyn:

“culture sits in teams and in the relationships between people. It’s how people are and how they behave towards each other.”

So, the question is, do those employees have to be in a traditional office space in order to behave in a manner that is consistent with the desired organisational culture??Or more directly, do those employees have to go to an office in order to behave?

This cuts to the very core of trust.??

Without trust, an organisation need not waste their time investing in seeking to build a positive culture, because it is doomed from the outset.?Without trust, the culture will be neutral at best, but more likely it will be negative.

Certainly, there is some logic to learning by osmosis.?This applies equally to the mentoring and development of less experienced employees, as it applies to culture.?But relying solely on learning by proximity is flawed.

Proximity can also lead to undesirable cultural traits developing, with office gossip and triangulation common issues that can facilitate and even support behaviours that are in direct conflict with the desired cultural outcomes.?A fragile culture can become a toxic one very swiftly when these factors take hold.

There are also a plethora of remote-first organisations across the globe whose culture is blooming, suggesting that the “walls of the office are merely a mirror for the culture” (paraphrased from Robert Teed).??

The walls do not create and maintain the culture, behaviours do.

Of course, office-first organisations have relied on proximity for decades, either in part or entirely, so allowing remote and/or hybrid working practices without a complete re-evaluation and reengineering of work practices and behaviours to support a positive culture will likely lead to an erosion of any culture that has developed inadvertently through having lots of people in the same space.??

It is possible that some organisations are actually experimenting on this basis, so they can conclude that these new ways of working don’t actually work for their organisation at all, “…we tried it and it failed.?Productivity is down and our culture is negative.?Now, everyone get back to the office full time.”

Of course, this will lead to good people leaving these organisations to join more forward-thinking places to ply their trade.?The great resignation / great realignment is an entire topic in itself.

Ultimately, remote-first organisations can create great cultures.?So can office-first organisations.?And so can hybrid organisations.?The challenge is how to support the behaviours necessary to create and maintain a positive culture when the underlying ways of working are fundamentally shifting, rather than allowing failure either inadvertently through lack of proper planning, or intentionally to prove a point.

Getting people together can support and enhance a great culture.?Indeed, to go further on this point, it is an important part of developing and maintaining a positive culture.?Events, training, collaborating on projects, socialising with colleagues, team building, are all essential.?But none of these actually requires an office in a traditional sense, and they definitely do not require people to sit in a traditional office for the majority of their working hours.

So, I guess my point is this – A traditional office is not needed to create a positive culture for an organisation.??

But great spaces with exceptional hospitality-led service to support in-person interaction are certainly part of the rich mixture of the #futureofwork, and a key component in developing and maintaining a positive organisational culture.

“The office is not dead, but the way we use it is.” (Thanks Kristoff Dubose for this quote!)

#futureofwork