One of the biggest challenges the global pandemic has brought to the surface is how difficult it can be to maintain the company culture when working at the office is no longer an option. Yet, the company culture is an essential part of what makes work enjoyable and helps you to retain staff. It is important that you devise ways to keep your company culture alive.
You should note that most experts believe working remotely will become increasingly common, even after the pandemic has passed. This means developing ways to maintain company culture is paramount to your continued success.
The good news is that whether you are dealing with regular staff or taking on some new ones from a labor hire agency, it is easier than you think to maintain the company culture.
Virtual Connectivity
The key to company culture is the ability for staff to chat with each other throughout the day. This isn’t just about work ideas. General conversation reinforces bonds and creates relationships. These are what ensure people are happy in their work and happy employees are more likely to stay with you as well as being more productive.
To help communicate you need to set up a virtual chat room. This allows all the staff to chat together and creates individual chats between specific employees.
The secret to the success of the virtual chat room is that you, and other management, stay out of it. This is a free forum where you need to trust your employees to express themselves without fear of reprisal.
Consider the virtual chat rooms as the equivalent of gossip around the water cooler.
Trust
It is important to trust your staff in the chat rooms and to do their job. Let every member of staff know what you expect of them when they are working at home and that you trust them to deliver.
While an official chat link is essential for discussing work-related matters. You need to trust your staff to get on with their jobs. If you don’t they are likely to look elsewhere and, your continual checking up on them will reduce their productivity.
Providing they know what they need to do and have an avenue to contact you if needed, let them get on with it!
Lunches
There are certain traditions that develop over time in an office environment. For example, people take lunch together. These traditions need to be maintained, even if it is virtually. There is no reason why people cannot still meet for lunch, just virtually instead of in person.
Facilitating and encouraging this will help to maintain your company culture.
Listen To Your Staff
Finally, it is essential that you make sure your staff has the opportunity to communicate with you and that you listen to them. They will tell you what they need to do the job and to continue enjoying working at the company. This ensures the company culture stays alive and evolves to reflect the new working environment. You may even find it is better than before!