Culture is the lifeblood of any business and it’s fair to say that some arteries of many cultures have been significantly damaged by COVID-19. This pandemic has upended the traditional way of working for many and impacted our daily routines and rituals that we have with our workmates. It’s a whole different world that we are navigating and even though technology is assisting us to stay in touch and helping to provide a sense of community, it’s nothing like the real connection we experience, and now crave, face to face.
This is why keeping your company’s culture alive really matters right now. Which is not an easy thing to do when your team are now forced to work remotely and you may not have had a chance to ‘practice’ to identify and iron out any challenges as they arose. So how do you keep your culture pumping?
This is a question on many leaders minds right now and it’s a big concern. Your culture can take a long time to build but it can be damaged so quickly. Another thing to note is we don’t know what normal is going to look like on the other side of this pandemic. Are we all just going to return to the office? Are we assuming people’s priorities will remain the same? Will people now want to be crammed into public transport like they were before? The other side of this could look very, very different so it’s a great time to be thinking differently about your culture and doing the things that matter to keep it strong.
What we need to remember is that remote and flexible working isn’t new ways of working. What is new is that we are now forced to do it. The choice has been taken away which brings a very different dynamic to it. So we need to embrace what we already did well to keep our team connected and leverage this to our benefit for now and the future.
In the video below I share 5 tips for keeping your culture pumping. I hope you find them useful.