How to build a thriving corporate culture in a hybrid world

The corporate world is slowly adapting to a new hybrid business model. With it came a series of unexpected challenges: zoom stress. Slack etiquette. The great resignation. Office culture is in flux. Many leaders are wondering what it’s like to successfully run a hybrid workplace: How do we take care of our people? How can we purposefully stay connected without being together? Who should be responsible for all changes?

Employers can no longer count on a great office space to define company culture. Instead, elements of new or previously neglected culture have become central to building and maintaining a thriving hybrid business model. While we quickly realized that being on Zoom for ten hours a day is unsustainable, understanding what isn’t working is the easy part. Now, as we prepare for future variables, it’s clear that our “back to office” plans will need to evolve again. Hybrid work is here to stay.

Twitter was one of the first companies to make headlines To establish a policy that employees can work from home “forever.” Facebook issued a similar statement. But the decision to commit to hybrid work forever is complex and making adjustments to the ways we work rests with managers and chief human resources officials (CHRO’s) to improvise and CEOs to implement. Leaders were expected to ensure the physical and mental safety of their employees, identify the best communication methods for a remote workforce all of a sudden, and create entirely new standards for maintaining day-to-day operations and building a culture.

As a strategic advisor, I have spent countless hours working with CHRO and CEO as they create new solutions to shape the company’s culture in this new era. Some recurring lessons have emerged: Emphasizing employee-centered design, transforming our digital behavior and putting physical and mental well-being first.

As a rule, this work begins with listening attentively to each member of the team. While discussing Airbnb’s return to the office, they surveyed employees to get their expectations about the future of work and their input on their potential return to office policies. As a February 2022 Pew Research Center study showed, among those who currently work from home all or most of the time, 78% said they would like to continue to do so after the pandemic, up from 64% in 2020. What often gets lost in rigor Executive decision making is remembering that these decisions affect people’s lives. When we make big decisions, we need to make sure we hear from our employees firsthand. That’s why Airbnb’s newly announced policy is being lauded as one that puts its employees, and thus the future of its business, first.

How do we gather our employees’ ideas so that we can lead with employee-centered design? Fortunately, there are many tools that allow us to connect virtually and collect employee feedback. However, the goal of implementing employee-centered design is more than that How do We use the tools at our disposal more than the tools themselves. If people feel out of the know while in remote control, creating an anonymous persistent Q+A company or a friendly Slack channel can help. In general, employee-centered design is about meeting people where they are, not where we want them to be.

Over the course of the pandemic, technology has quickly become the lifeblood of communication. On the other hand, reliance on screens has brought new challenges. In the darkest moments, our devices felt like a leash, keeping us through a never-ending working day. To alleviate these feelings, designing for moments of freedom can do wonders for well-being, productivity, and creativity.

At the enterprise level, greater reliance on technology also requires thoughtful assessment of policies and behaviours. Bias that existed in the past can be amplified in a more digital work environment. According to a study conducted at Stanford University, women with young children like to work from home full-time approximately 50% more than men. This becomes complicated when you consider the fact that in-office employees are more likely to be promoted than WFH employees. Being aware of our digital behaviors helps us eliminate the biases and design systems that enable us all to thrive.

I would argue that the most important thing I’ve seen is that the organization’s responsibility – not well-being – is to prioritize the physical and mental well-being of team members. There are obvious ways, like offering universal health benefits and paid time off so people can take care of themselves. But these are starting points, not destinations. In order to promote true well-being, you need to make sure that you create a space of psychological safety.

There are many tactics one can use to combat a toxic company culture. The first is real life sharing all transparently – warts and all. These past two years have been incredibly painful. People have lost family members, become full-time caregivers, and simply cannot continue working the way they once did. Many felt the need to keep the chaos of real life a secret. Take closed meetings in the lockers while their children play in the other room. But what does hiding the messy reality of our hybrid work life do?

Our shabby notions of professionalism — never exaggerating people’s involvement at work, never having your boss know what’s going on in your personal life, and hiding your pregnancy for as long as possible — no longer serve us. Now more than ever, people want to see each other authentically, especially their leaders.

However, it is not enough to simply be clear about life’s struggles. There must be policies in place to support. After years of collective grief, there is something powerful about improving bereavement leave and expanding “maternity” leave to include parental leave and caregiving leave. Reddit now offers abortion leave and Starbucks has expanded its fertility benefits to become more comprehensive. Getting these things done can take time and money, but the result is a more open, cheerful workplace and higher performance for all of us.