Cultural connectivity is one of the top concerns leaders have about deploying an on scale work at home program. The question is, "how will we successfully convey our culture, and inspire people to engage, when they aren't in the building?"
It's a good question, and it should be followed by a second question: "how will we measure our effectiveness?"
Here are some proven, recommended strategies for grounding corporate culture at home as effectively as you do it in house, and measuring how well you are doing:
- Meet together as a leadership team for the soul purpose of solving for this.
- Affirm what the term "company culture" means to your organization. Generally, it includes things like core values, beliefs, how leaders lead, how people make decisions, how leaders treat each other, accepted behaviors and desired behaviors.
- Discuss and identify, very specifically, the strategies and actions you take to convey culture to in-house employees, and inspire them to engage. It will look something like this:
4. Next, go through the same exercise, replacing the term "in-house" with "remote".
What needs to change as a result of people being distributed? The tools employees use to learn about company culture, to see it in action, to test it - some of them will change. But the core actions involved will not. So the question we ask is - how good will the business become in terms of furnishing the tools and environment for remote people to observe, test, and participate in company culture? There are many technologies that help make this pretty easy to accomplish. The work is in rethinking the ways in which the company unveils and promotes is company culture from day one (of working remotely).
Your table could look some thing like this:
Interested in best practices on work at home strategies for contact centers and support functions?
Join us at an upcoming Work at Home Conference (Denver July 18-19 and Laguna Beach, CA October 16-17 and November 14-15).