Corporate Culture Has to be the Anchor as We Redefine Work Post-Pandemic

In recent weeks, whenever I talk to fellow business leaders, the conversations inevitably focus on two topics—return to work and retention and recruitment fears. Much of the talk about return to work has been very functional, focusing on how often we should expect people to be in the office, how we stagger schedules to make sure that the right group of people are in the office together, and what precautions we should take to keep everyone safe.

The hiring talks are more emotional. As leaders, we realize that the pandemic has been a great reset for our people. Some will decide to leave the workforce entirely and others have realized that in the era of remote work their careers are not limited to the cities in which they live. In Canada, there’s a fear of brain drain to the United States, but even my American colleagues are concerned as they see jobs left empty and fewer candidates to fill them.

While these conversations have been important, they have struck me as very functional. We end up talking about HR policies, compensation, and benefits. I worry that we’re falling into a trap of practicality. The pandemic fundamentally changed how we live and work and the answers to these questions of reshuffling won’t be found in HR alone. I think we all need to take a step back and talk about who we are as organizations.

I often work with clients on their corporate culture because I believe that everything ladders back to that. The true power of any brand comes from your people and as Simon Sinek has said, “customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” Research has shown that organizations with an engaged culture have less employee turnover and higher productivity, but they also have higher customer satisfaction and higher share price increase.

All organizations need to define their purpose (what we do for each other and our customers), values (the guardrails that define our decision making to deliver against our purpose), and behaviors (how we work together to deliver against these values). What are your core values? Respect, empathy, partnership, optimism, courage? Those are a few examples but there are many to choose from. Once you’ve defined these, they become the organization’s NorthStar and the decisions you make every day—and especially in times of turmoil like these—all anchor back to it.

Turning these values into a living, breathing corporate culture, however, was far easier to do when everyone was in the same place for 40-plus hours each week. Shared experiences, a sense of camaraderie, work wives and husbands, late nights preparing for client presentations, promotions, birthday celebrations, wellness events, and impromptu after-work drinks meant that people, even new hires, quickly understand who you were and what you stood for.

This is going to be harder now, but I think it can be done if leadership is purposeful about it. Everybody in the leadership team needs to be thinking about how you get your people—whether they are new to your team, veterans, or people you fear you may lose—to see their role in the organization as not just a functional or transactional relationship but as being part of something bigger and more meaningful. Some areas where we need to put thought into include:

1. Getting time together. In my organization, our return to office is centered on together time and entirely about flexibility. We are not saying that we need people in the office three days a week or that certain teams need to come in on certain days. But we are acknowledging that there are things that work better in person—we miss the days of brainstorming sessions where a whole team would get in front of the white board and jam something out in a few hours. Whatever you decide on for the back-to-office plan, it needs to include ways to capture this kind of creative energy and the times it is important for everyone to be together.
2. Sharing our work and collective experience. One of the things that has suffered in this time of remote work is the connection to what other teams are doing. Just by virtue of being in the office together, people across the organization used to know about all of the major presentations and project milestones. In contrast, remote work is often siloed whether by department or by project. I realize now that we were never very deliberate about internally sharing our latest and greatest and that we will have to be moving forward. Work keeps evolving, make a plan for sharing best practices and company successes so that everyone can stay up-to-date and has an opportunity to take pride in the company’s successes.
3. Focusing on fit. We may all be spending less time in the office but, ironically, I think this makes fit more important than ever. We’re working so differently that fit to me now almost overweighs skill set. You can teach somebody how to build a slide deck, but you can’t teach somebody to take initiative, they either have that or not. When bringing in new hires, you will need a process to determine not just if they can do the work but if they will be a good addition to your team’s culture.
4. Creating meaningful mentorship. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the people who have recently entered the workforce and how much they’ve lost out on. The beginning of your career is often when you put in the late hours at work, make lifelong friends, travel with your boss, and go out for drinks with the team. These moments—that late night before a workshop when you know you’re about to knock it out of the park—create trust and a richness for people that becomes part of the corporate culture. We’ve never had (or needed) a formal mentorship program before but I strongly believe it will be the best proxy for those organic experiences that today’s new hires aren’t getting. Setting up new hires with a mentor can help them learn your unique culture and offers career development opportunities for both mentors and mentees.

I understand why many leaders are focusing on the practical, concrete aspects of returning to work and attracting new hires—our world changed rapidly, and we are all trying to find our footing. Granular decisions feel easier to make but this is actually the time to look at the big picture. Defining or recommitting to your guiding principles and working toward a corporate culture that aligns and binds leadership and is what will bring organizations together even if we continue to spend much of our time physically apart. The way we work is changing but when you embrace reinvention, change can be exciting.

Written by Sandra Messore-Duff, President of Jackman.