Today, nearly 50 percent of the American workforce does their job from outside the office. It’s a trend that’s mostly positive: those who work remotely report higher job satisfaction, less stress and better work-life balance. According to numerous studies, they’re also more productive.
However, there’s one element of business that remote work makes more difficult, and that’s the creation and maintenance of healthy, cohesive workplace culture.
After all, it can be pretty difficult to feel connected with those you interact face-to-face with only sporadically. But wait, does culture even apply if your entire team is remote?
It’s a valid question, but the answer is most definitely “yes.”
Work culture isn’t just the sum of what people see, do and communicate just within the physical space in which they work — it’s what they see, do and communicate when interacting with one another.
In other words, culture isn’t something you choose to have or not have in an organization; it exists all on its own, and your job as a leader is to mold it into something beneficial.
While there can be plenty of variance in what makes for good workplace culture, there’s at least one facet of it that no new business can afford not to prioritize, and that’s integrity.
Establishing a culture that emphasizes integrity means that each team member shares in a sense of mutual trust and accountability.
The question is, how do you build up that mutual trust when your team members are separated by miles, countries, or even time zones?
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Define your organization’s values
Each of us has our own set of core personal values, regardless of whether we’ve ever precisely articulated them. But in order for a company to operate efficiently, it has to have its own set of values that are shared by its team members.
And as the leader of your organization, it’s up to you to set the standard for what your company’s values are. These values are crucial because, in the context of your business, integrity refers to being honest and principled, but it also connotes unification and solidity.
Teams with integrity stand together, and values serve as the common ground they stand on.
Weigh your culture check with new hires
E-commerce store, Zappo’s, is notorious for basing up to half of its hiring decisions just on a candidate’s “cultural fit.”
In many cases, great skills can’t make up for a personality that clashes with existing team members, and that applies just as much to remote workers as it does to onsite employees. Bringing a poor cultural fit onto your team can have a substantially greater impact than having multiple super-star employees, according to Harvard research.
Translation: it’s not worth the risk and could have an overall negative effect on your team’s integrity.
To use an analogy, including a plastic link on an aluminum chain will significantly weaken the overall integrity of the chain, regardless of whether or not the link is the perfect size and shape.
Related: 5 Smart Tools All Remote Entrepreneurs Need in Order to Succeed
Make sure your team knows one another
When there’s little-to-no face time among team members, it’s extremely easy for your team to become siloed, which does the opposite of create trust.
Thanks to modern technology, being separated by distance and time doesn’t preclude introductions, meetings and conversations that create a sense of team bonding and unity. This will also lead to more efficiency within the (virtual) workplace, which is good for your bottom line.
Emphasize transparency
Researchers have isolated numerous benefits of transparency in the workplace, and that list of positives is likely to grow. But where technology has made remote work both possible and profitable, it also tends to make transparency harder to come by… or does it?
Even if you can’t “see” others in the same way you can in a shared office space, there are plenty of software services that allow you to monitor and track employee activity and production — and you can choose to make as much data as you want available across your organization.
Remote work is only more productive if it’s actually getting done — and implementing SaaS solutions are a great way to ensure that’s the case.
When productivity, communication and transparency are all points of emphasis in your work culture, integrity takes care of itself.
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The last word
There is no simple formula for creating a healthy workplace culture, and certainly no shortcut to running your own business founded on integrity. Entrepreneurs should be extra cautious that their leadership, hiring, and management practices all reflect the kind of organization they want to be known for.
Originally published March 15, 2020.
