“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.” – Okakura Kakuzo
In the wake of Covid-19, many organisations had to shut down their businesses unexpectedly. While many attempted to adapt their work arrangements overnight, some had to hit the pause button indefinitely.
In addition to these fundamental challenges to office settings, “how you distribute work, deploy your workforce, engage your people and organise your workplace” are other factors that will affect your company’s culture too.
While leaders strive to practice employee engagement within their company so as to better “ensure the safety and welfare of their people”, it is becoming obvious that restarting the workplace culture will be an unavoidable task soon.
As such, in this article, we will be sharing more information on how you can better push through these tumultuous times through the second strategy among the 4 ‘R’s of the new era by restarting the workplace culture.
What Is Workplace Culture?
It is highly probable that you have previously heard of the term ‘workplace culture’ but as the Human Capital Trends Report conducted by Deloitte found, only 12% of the companies surveyed in 2016 knew what it truly meant.
According to an article published by SHRM.com, workplace culture refers to the shared beliefs and values established by leaders that are communicated and reinforced through various methods.
Otherwise known as ‘organisational culture’, it also ultimately shapes “employee perceptions, behaviours and understanding”. Hence, workplace culture essentially sets the context for everything an enterprise does too.
Key factors that make up a workplace culture include its history and environment as well as the people who lead and work for it.
Additionally, studying both the “written and unwritten rules that influence individual and group behaviour and attitudes” can also help one to gain a better understanding on matters that relate to restarting the workplace culture.
Why Is Restarting Your Workplace Culture Important?
With the knowledge that change is inevitable, organisations that are looking to continue their businesses effectively after the pandemic should also look into why restarting the workplace culture is so critical today.
As mentioned in an article published by ManagementStudyGuide.com, the culture of a company represents certain predefined policies which guide its employees and provide them with a sense of direction at the workplace.
Setting up your workplace culture can thus also ensure that each employee is “clear about his/her roles and responsibilities in the organisation and knows how to accomplish tasks ahead of the deadlines”.
Additionally, an article shared on BusinessWorld.in revealed that “about 92% of leaders from successful companies believe that the workplace culture has a high impact on companies’ financial performance or is critical to reaching financial goals”.
As such, developing a proper workplace culture can increase the financial stability of a company too.
Building a good workplace culture can also help companies to drive up their engagement and retention rates with employees. Implementing a strong culture will enable employees to “better understand what is expected of them and how they can achieve their professional goals”.
As such, promoting a good workplace culture will allow employers to keep their colleagues onboard for a longer period of time.
Due to the possibility of physical distancing measures remaining in place, the “use of spaces, furniture configurations, choice of finishes and facilities operations” by businesses could be severely affected too.
In addition to that, “90% of employers believe that it is an urgent requirement to provide their employees with remote and flexible work options” as the latter expect to have more flexibility with work arrangements in the near future.
With these changes being anticipated by leaders to take effect soon, restarting the workplace culture – by first understanding its importance – is a great step that organisations can consider taking to deal with the preparation of change management, at the earliest.
How Can You Restart Your Workplace Culture?
There are numerous ways companies can restart their workplace culture in the modern world.
Leaders can begin by designing, building and financing more permanent and flexible systems that extend to people’s homes to better support enterprise needs.
Keeping the advanced digital and technological shifts taking place around the world in mind, companies will also “expect workers to re-create work-level digital environments at home as part of business-continuity policies”.
Encourage your colleagues to take up career development programmes and training sessions every once in a while. It is important to provide your team with opportunities to upskill and grow into better individuals.
This act will make them “feel appreciated for their contributions and help to enhance productivity, performance and engagement” within your company. This will, in turn, promote the process of restarting the workplace culture in your organisation.
“The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right things. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial”. – Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb
To sum it up, re-envisioning, restarting, reframing and reinventing are the 4 ‘R’s of the new eRa that can prepare you to tackle the challenges posed by the new normal head on.
This new normal is also presenting us with the priceless “opportunity to grow and define what it means to be a business, a team and a professional”.
Restarting the workplace culture, in particular, can help you and your team to extract the best out of each other. This will develop a habit within individuals to strive for excellence while achieving both personal as well as organisational goals all at once!
We hope this sharing has provided you with some useful insights and will be back with another written piece on the other 2 ‘R’s of the new eRa. In the meantime, consider restarting your workplace culture to better adapt to the changes taking place around you!
StrengthsAsia has helped many individual and corporate clients all throughout the region in empowering leaders by enabling breakthrough experiences for both leaders and followers. If you want to learn more about our StrengthsFinder Leadership Development or StrengthsFinder Team Building Program, feel free to reach out to us here.
Reshma is StrengthsAsia’s content writer and research contributor. She enjoys spending her time writing anything from poems to screenplays, and everything in between. She also finds joy in reading novels, baking and catching movies with her family. Participating in creative activities helps her find inspiration and new ideas for her work.
Aly is StrengthsAsia’s marketing and communications guru and lead editor. She's over the top inquisitive and everyone in the company knows her as “The Googler” as she practically googles everything. Honestly, we all worry for her… She is also the Principal Trainer for our one of a kind ice cream team building workshops in Asia.
