7/10/2020 How to Sustain Your Organization’s Culture When Everyone Is Remote

How to Sustain Your

Organization’s Culture
When Everyone Is
Remote
The coronavirus pandemic’s o ce exodus risks diminishing
company culture unless leaders take action to support it.

Jennifer Howard-Grenville • June 24, 2020 READING TIME: 9 MIN

Within just a few weeks earlier this year, the COVID-19

pandemic triggered a massive shift to remote work that
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may change the o ce as we know it forever. Many large

companies are urging employees to work from home for
months to come, and some CFOs are making plans to
shed o ce real estate and permanently move some
portion of their workforces to remote working.

With such a swift and large-scale exodus of white-collar

workers from their o ces, it’s no surprise that some feel
nostalgic for even the mundane facets of o ce life: the
cubicle mazes, bad co ee, and watercooler
conversation. What makes o ce life meaningful for
many, though, is that it helps sustain organizational
culture — the largely taken-for-granted beliefs and
practices that underpin how people work together.
These are harder to feel and maintain when so many of
us are crouched at a kitchen table, fending o children
and pets, and growing exhausted with a constant stream
of videoconference meetings.

Although remote working is far from new — 8% of U.S.

employees worked from home at least once a week
before the pandemic — the bene ts of face-to-face
interaction for individual well-being and corporate
culture are clear. In fact, IBM, a pioneer in remote
working that heralded the bene ts of having 40% of its
workforce working remotely in 2009, made headlines in
2017 when it brought thousands of employees back to
the o ce.

It turns out that even in today’s world of abundant online

collaboration tools, there is often no substitute for
copresence when communication, problem-solving, and
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creativity are called for. In part, this is because as

humans, we make sense of the world and our
interactions through our body language, emotions, and
embodied experiences, all of which are much di erent in
a virtual space.1

What will the exodus from o ces do to organizational

culture, which is felt and experienced more than it is
articulated? How can managers and employees sustain
a culture, or adapt it e ectively, in the face of extended
periods of remote working?

How Organizational
Culture Works — Without
an O ce
Culture is the holistic and somewhat mysterious force
that guides actions and interactions in the workplace.
Despite a company’s best e orts to capture culture in
words, such as the stated values or commitments
posted on the wall, most employees would recognize
these as, at best, sparse signposts of a more complex,
subtle ethos that pervades everything they do — one
that, after a while, becomes largely taken for granted.
That’s why we often recognize our organization’s culture
only when we step outside of it — for example, by
working closely with a new client or switching
companies, roles, or geographies, or perhaps through

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the sudden loss of it when working at our kitchen tables

with no physical interaction with colleagues.

The good news is that some of the most visible signi ers
of culture, such as foosball tables or in-house chefs, are
only what MIT professor emeritus Edgar Schein refers to
as its artifacts — at best, they’re vehicles for interactions
that fuel a real culture of, say, playful creativity.2 When
the artifacts change, the deeper cultural beliefs and
habitual practices need not also change.

But when people return to work, the workplace itself will

be physically transformed to shield employees from one
another and enforce new hygiene standards. How can
managers ensure that valued aspects of the culture
endure?

Make culture visible by calling it out. Aspects of

culture are present — though often obscured — in
seemingly mundane, day-to-day happenings, like
colleagues interacting or making decisions. Sociologist
Ann Swidler describes habitual practices as the core
carriers of culture. She argues that people draw from a
“tool kit” of cultural habits and practices.3 Knowing how
to use a culture’s tools — that is, when and how they
apply — is the real mark of belonging to a culture.

In turn, the beliefs about how we do things as an

organization are revealed through people’s practices. For
example, at one major oil producer, employees default to
“getting things done” — dropping other priorities and
jumping in to solve problems as they come up — and

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those who rise through the ranks are particularly

e ective at such reactive problem-solving.4 Associated
with this habitual practice is employees’ belief that their
culture is entrepreneurial and even “scrappy,” especially
when compared with peers they regard as more
cautious and risk averse.

As everyday tasks now occur remotely and practices are

sometimes hard to observe, it’s even more important for
leaders and managers to call attention to and
acknowledge which aspects of culture are on display
and why that matters. For example, if a group is making
a decision about how some core aspect of its service
o ering will shift online for a period of time, the nature of
the problem-solving around those challenges should
re ect valued aspects of the culture. A manager might
remind team members that they arrived at a certain
approach because they are so skilled at drawing on
multiple perspectives for input. Laying bare this aspect
of the cultural tool kit not only reminds people of its
existence but also signals its value; by authentically
re ecting employees’ skills, the company’s solution
should align better with customers’ expectations, even
as competitors are making similar shifts.

Perhaps as important is calling out a ronts to culture.

When managers don’t visibly censure practices that
depart from the desired culture, the boundaries of
culture are not well de ned. Finally, invite others to
name or defend cultural norms when they see them in
operation. Culture cannot be simply espoused by

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leaders but must arise from and resonate with

employees’ experiences.5

Welcome modi cations to the cultural tool kit. One

bene t of thinking about culture as a tool kit is that it
alerts us to the fact that we have a variety of tools at our
disposal when we get things done in an organization.
And, like a real tool kit, we often have more tools than we
regularly use. But Swidler argues that this very feature
— knowing more culture than we use — is what enables
us to use culture exibly and somewhat expansively.
Sometimes it might be entirely appropriate to be
entrepreneurial, but under other circumstances in the
same organization, it’s important to be risk averse.

Tool kits also change somewhat over time. This is

because we all are exposed to various cultural tool kits
through other aspects of our lives — such as volunteer
activities, sports teams, or even our home lives.
Employees can begin to use habits and practices
developed elsewhere and perhaps begin to in uence
how others act, ultimately expanding the cultural tool kit
in their workplace.

With your workforce now scattered and working from

home, other practices might be more readily at hand.
Are best practices from Zoom yoga sessions in ltrating
your work calls? Are the ways that teachers coax input
from your reticent teens during homeschooling
in uencing how you check in with your team? These
may be useful practices to cultivate as part of a modi ed
cultural tool kit. After all, we now understand
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organizational cultures to be much more open and

interactive with their surrounding environments —
responsive to expectations to be more socially and
environmentally responsible, for example — and aligned
with other aspects of employees’ experiences beyond
the workplace.6 Now might be an opportune time to
actively notice when your organization’s cultural tool kit
is being exed or extended.

For instance, employees’ actions to connect creatively

with vulnerable people in their communities might be
showing up as new ways of enacting a cultural
commitment to inclusivity at work. By noticing these
actions and explaining how they connect to existing
elements in the tool kit, managers can reinforce how
their culture is responsive to changing circumstances.
Conversely, unwelcome modi cations to the cultural
tool kit that undermine core beliefs should be swiftly
countered, perhaps by o ering alternatives that are
more culturally in tune. After all, cultures thrive and
evolve when they are cohesive, meaning that even
divergent actions stem from common beliefs but
devolve when they allow unmitigated variety.

Use disruption to bolster the cultural core. Not every

aspect of culture is equally critical to guard. Some of
what is in a cultural tool kit may be the equivalent of
many sizes of picture hangers — useful but only
somewhat substitutable and applicable in relatively
limited situations. Other contents of the cultural tool kit
might be more akin to your grandfather’s well-worn

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measuring tape — applicable in a variety of situations

and holding special value because it is connected to
memories and history that are important to you.

A time of disruption presents an opportunity to remind

employees of aspects of an organization’s past —
founding ideals, stories, and commitments — that have
shaped both its culture (how we get work done and think
about our work) and are central to its identity (who we
are as a company). Building up these core elements of
culture can remind employees of an organization’s
strengths and help them navigate tough times.

For example, MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif, recently

reminded the university community of the institution’s
evolution from a technical college to a leading research
entity as a result of World War II: An intense e ort to
develop radar technology birthed an interdisciplinary,
collaborative culture that students, faculty, and sta
continue to recognize and value. That collaborative
ethos will be critical to how the organization might
evolve as a result of the current pandemic.

Conversely, disruption can also open the door to

challenging outdated aspects of a culture that are
nonetheless given outsize symbolic and ceremonial
value but are now holding back needed transitions.
Some organizations are nding that long-desired
changes, like decentralizing their decision-making or
becoming less bureaucratic, have suddenly — and
surprisingly — taken place in mere weeks. These
changed practices will last, however, only with ongoing
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work to connect them to some existing aspects of the

culture and to suppress or eliminate other aspects that
ght against them.

And managers should take care in making changes:

Attempting to change aspects of culture that are tied
strongly to an organization’s identity can be especially
disruptive and generate strong emotions.7

Not all organizations will emerge stronger from the

current pandemic and the devastating health, economic,
and social impacts it is unleashing. But managers and
leaders with a rm sense of what their organizational
culture is — a common tool kit that enables their
employees to act, and the beliefs and commitments
brought forward by acting in certain ways — can help
their employees navigate the current environment in a
way that is authentic to the organization’s history yet
exible to the realities we all face.

It may be a long time until many white-collar workers

see their o ces and gather with peers around the
proverbial watercooler, but we can remind ourselves that
it was never about the watercooler anyway. Culture is
ultimately about the actions we take and make visible to
others, and the meanings we invest in those — which is
harder, but not impossible, to maintain from the kitchen
table.

Topics

Leadership Organizational Behavior

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Howard-Grenville (@jhoward_grenvil) is the Diageo
Professor in Organisation Studies at the Cambridge Judge Business
School at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on how
people generate and navigate change within and beyond their
organizations.

REFERENCES (7)

1. M. de Rond, I. Holeman, and J. Howard-Grenville, “Sensemaking

From the Body: An Enactive Ethnography of Rowing the Amazon,”
Academy of Management Journal 62, no. 6 (December 2019): 1961-
1988.

2. E.H. Schein, “Organizational Culture and Leadership,” 5th ed.

(Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2017).

Show All References

TAGS: Corporate Culture, Corporate Values, COVID-19

Resources, Employee Communication, Remote Work

REPRINT #: 62110

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