Keeping Sustain Organization’s Culture When Everyone Is Remote

Within a few weeks earlier this year, the COVID-19 epidemic made a big shift to remote work and could change the office as we know. Many large organizations are asking employees to work from home in the next few months, and some employers are planning to eliminate office real estate sales and move some of their workforce permanently to remote employment (Jennifer, 2020). Remote work is nothing new,8% of U.S. employees worked from home at least once a week before the epidemic and the benefits of working face-to-face for personal well-being and corporate culture are clear. In fact, IBM, a pioneer in remote working, announced the benefits of working 40% of its workforce remotely in 2009 and made headlines in 2017, bringing thousands of employees back to work (Jennifer, 2020). The employee gives an understanding of the world and interactions through the body language, emotions and sculptural experiences, all of which are different than in a virtual space (Rond et al, 2019). One of the most important fact is when cultural artifacts change in accordance with the situations, deep cultural beliefs and practices of the organization no need to change (Schein, 2017).

Organizational Culture Working Without an Office

Culture is a perfect and somewhat mystical force that guides workplace interactions. Despite a company's best efforts to capture culture in terms of expressed values or commitment, many employees identify these as rare locations of more complex, subtle ethics that permeate everything they do, after a while, largely takes it into account (Jennifer, 2020). We often recognize the culture of our organization only when we are out of it - for example, by working closely with a new client, or by changing companies, roles, or geography, or by suddenly losing it while working at our kitchen desks (Jennifer, 2020).

SHRM (2020) has state five steps for adapting workplace practices due to covid-19 as below. This is a comprehensive guide to making adaptive culture a major strength of your organization, from what culture is and why it’s important to a roadmap follow to create a culture that delivers results in pandemic situation.

1. Remote Work

• Practice employees on new technologies for distant work and working out supervisors on managing remote workers, for an example virtual presentation, meetings require new approaches for success and how to manage employees who struggle to perform remotely.
• Implementing employment strategies for remote employees and develop practices for remote handling of human resource issues such as investigations and terminations for an example engaging remote employee during pandemic and developing methods for remote investigation.

2. Compensation and Benefits

• Reschedule compensation plans to reflect the contemporary environment and address leave policies to encourage employees to take time off when sick and to apply vacation leave for an example emerging a post-pandemic pay plan and minimize vacation arrangement conflicts in the pandemic.
• Emerging a response strategy for employees with care responsibilities interferes with an employee’s ability to work and reschedule employee benefit plans to reflect acceptable election changes for an example child care complicates return to work and Covid-19 check list.

3. Staffing Employee Relations

• Reschedule selection and recruitment methods to allow for social and remote procedures and Implement procedures for onboarding remote workers for example recruiting employees during pandemic and virtual onboarding of remote employees more vital than ever.
• Reschedule layoffs and recall policies to prepare for fluctuating staffing needs and Review recall procedures to ensure a fair and lawful process for an example layoff and recall policy and recall furloughed workers lawfully.
• Address bullying behavior at work to avoid claims of a hostile work environment and/or decreased employee morale and anticipate the potential for workplace violence incidents due to increased stress and anxiety amongst employees for example preventing workplace violence inspired by covid-19 and stopping bullying during the covid-19 emergency.

4. Communication

• Develop a communication plan for employees’ return-to-work and changes to policies and practices and determine how company-wide staff meetings will be conducted for a example 12 tips for return-to-work communications and how to have town hall meetings without spreading the coronavirus.
• Develop a process for identifying and notifying the workforce of possible communicable disease exposure and recognize the possibility of increased union-organizing activity and prepare communications in response, for an example union organize in response to covid-19 safety concerns and notice of workplace exposure to a communicable disease.

One of the leading telecommunication company Sierra constructions also adopted their organization culture in accordance with COVID-19 epidemic situation. When considering the division of radio network planning and optimization where I work for, they implement the remote working with all the process and procedures in a systematic way to enable the organization continuity. In here the top management decided to implement work from home policies from beginning of November and they provided computers and internet facilities to the employees and they communicated within the organization community and reviewed the employees’ work by using software such as tracking systems and video conference which lead to keep the organization revenue sustain. Figure 2 shows the total revenue of October and November respectively and it proves that the HR professionals were capable to handle the organizational culture very well even the Covid -19 pandemic situation.

Figure 1: Announcing employees of work from home via email

Source: Kamaj, 2020

Figure 2: Sierra monthly revenues of October & November

Source: Dulmi, 2020

Conclusion

There are many different ways people can work remotely and that’s the beauty of remote work - people can choose to work in a way that makes their lives more meaningful, for example, some people have the opportunity to work remotely for most of the working week, but have to go to individual meetings at the office one day a week (SHRM, 2020). A remote employee is someone who is employed by a company, but works outside of a traditional office environment. While remote work is becoming more and more common, it’s true that there are misunderstandings, those are Remote workers are “always-on”, Remote workers don’t actually work and remote workers have trouble communicating(SHRM, 2020).Further There are multitude of benefits to remote work for both employees and employers, ranging from increased productivity to happier, healthier workers. Let’s break down a few of the advantages: Flexible lifestyle, Better health, wellness, Renewed passion for their job and Cost savings, Engaged employees, Higher productivity respectively (SHRM, 2020).

References

Dulmi, L. (2020) MMR Details. [email] Sent to Eranga Semage, 01 December.

Jennifer, H., (2014) The coronavirus pandemic’s office exodus risks diminishing company culture unless leaders take action to support it. [in press] MIT Sloan management. Available from https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-sustain-your-organizations-culture-when-everyone-is-remote/  [Accessed 2 Dec 2020].

Kamaj, J. (2020) Work plan of November. [email] Sent to Eranga Semage, 05 November.

Rond, M., Holeman, I., Howard-Grenville, J., (2019) Sensemaking from the Body: An Enactive Ethnography of Rowing the Amazon. [in press] Academy of Management Journal. Available from https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2017.1417 [Accessed 2 Dec 2020].

Schein, E.H. (2017) Organizational Culture and Leadership. 5th edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education Limited.

SHRM (2020) ADAPTING WORKPLACE PRACTICES DUE TO COVID-19. [online]: SHRM. Available from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-forms/documents/rtw_checklist.pdf [Accessed 2 Dec 2020].

SHRM (2020) Viewpoint: How to Manage Employees Who Struggle to Perform Remotely. [online]: SHRM. Available from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/organizational-and-employee-development/pages/viewpoint-how-to-manage-employees-who-struggle-to-perform-remotely.aspx [Accessed 2 Dec 2020].

SHRM (2020) 4 Essential Soft Skills for Successful Remote Work. [online]: SHRM. Available from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/4-essential-soft-skills-for-successful-remote-work.aspx [Accessed 2 Dec 2020].