It seemed like your average baby shower. Michele Kornelis unwrapped miniature booties, adorable onesies, rattles and other gifts, many of them straight from her registry. There were cupcakes. The attendees—all of them Michele’s coworkers—played a baby-themed version of Price is Right and a guessing game revolving around the baby’s name. Smiles, tears, and well-wishes were in abundance.
Michele, however, was in Texas, while her baby shower guests were scattered throughout Florida, Idaho, Utah, and North Carolina. The gifts and cupcakes and been shipped prior to the event and the well-wishes and laughter were delivered via video chat.
It was a “virtual” team baby shower, yet the impact on Michele was very real. “I probably won’t have a baby shower here since family and friends are so far,” she said. “So my team throwing one means the world to me. It’s a memory my husband and I will cherish forever.” Though separated by thousands of miles, this small group of employees have formed a tight-knit bond.
Michele credits her team’s closeness to a strong company culture that encourages meaningful connections, open communication, and constant innovation. AnswerConnect’s mission is to change the way the world works by empowering people to work Anywhere. But work doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
With at least 37% of workers having worked from a distance in the last year, the standard office looks very different from the cubicle farms of the past. With the absence of conference rooms, water coolers, coffee breaks, and mandatory Monday meetings, the importance of creating a positive company culture is more important than ever.
Companies have struggled to balance company culture with distance work since the first time an employee lugged their laptop to their favorite coffee shop, but the answers are just a WiFi connection away.
Make Mission Matter
In his iconic TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” Simon Sinek illustrates the ripple effect that occurs when business leaders and organizations start with Why. “What’s your purpose? What’s your cause?” he aks. “What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?” Operating from this center, he asserts, will speak to your audience on a deeper level and inspire them to follow you.
Our Why, for example, is to change how the world works because we firmly believe helping business owners untether themselves from the office has a wide-reaching positive impact. Helping people work Anywhere creates a lean, flexible, more efficient work model that gives small business owners with limited resources a better chance at success.
Working anywhere also cuts down on the need to commute, lowering C02 emissions. It’s environmentally friendly by lessening carbon footprints, and it promotes a better work/life balance. We help make the world a better place to live and work.
We communicate this frequently in our training materials, newsletters and other internal communications to reinforce the Why behind what we do. When you give your employees the chance to be a part of something bigger, they’ll become your brand ambassador.
Create an authentic brand narrative, with input from all members of the organization, and share it with employees, clients and the world—you’ll see that it makes a difference in how employees act, and the world sees you.
Share Your Values
Hand-in-hand with placing your mission front-and-center is sharing your values. Values are the lifeblood of your company culture. They indicate what matters most to you as a company and work as guideposts for your employees. In an office, values are relatively easy to share through inspirational posters, reading materials, and work field trips. Without the office, it just takes a little creativity and initiative.
Our commitment to being environmentally friendly isn’t just lip service, for example. We’ve created several initiatives that allow employees to give back. Employees earn paid time off to volunteer with a goal of logging 7,500 company-wide volunteer hours in 2019. Employees choose what they’re passionate about and pursue it—making them and their communities happy.
We’ve also launched the 1 Tree 1 Planet Initiative. Each month, for every account registered with us, we plant a tree through non-profit organization One Tree Planted. In January alone, we planted 10,256 trees in the wildfire-ravaged California woodland.
Eco-friendliness is naturally a byproduct of distance work, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be the core value of every distance-based organization. Leaders need to decide what drives their organization, what the employees are passionate about and what they can do to make the world a better place.
Cultivate Employee Growth and Happiness
The Law of Congruent Experience states “employees will deliver a customer experience that matches their own employee experience in the organization.” Employees that are overworked and underappreciated will deliver work that’s lower quality in a less efficient manner—as we all would in a situation where we’re not being treated equitably.
Fostering a positive and encouraging environment isn’t just the right thing to do, it makes business sense, with organizations seeing as much as 35% higher productivity gains. There are several ways to encourage growth and happiness:
- Give your employees opportunities to learn. There are so many avenues for online learning, many are absolutely free. (We’re biased, but we’re fans of our own app, AdaptiveU.) Nurturing talent and encouraging employees who want to take their skills to the next level will benefit everyone.
- Empower your employees to call out stellar behavior when they see it. We have a Connections Team who share positive feedback and send handwritten thank-you notes and gifts between coworkers. Highlighting good work will create strong, positive teams.
- Be understanding of the values other cultures hold dear. Working Anywhere creates opportunities for many different cultures to come together. Celebrate the differences.
There is no one-size-fits-all template for building a culture of happiness, but the first step is as simple as asking employees what they value and what they want to get out of their work. Surveys and focus groups are fast and easy ways to start a culture transformation.
Create Connections
In an always-connected world, the chances to connect are more numerous than ever before. Chat rooms and video calls are just a couple methods to champion human connection in a work-from-Anywhere environment. AnywhereWorks and Teleport are our instant messaging and video conferencing programs respectively—but there are numerous options for your organization to utilize, some of which are completely free if you’re smaller.
An open-door policy for feedback, ideas, innovation and process improvement is critical for organic growth. Good ideas don’t come solely from the top. Leaning in and listening to what everyone has to say is the best way to be successful, period. Don’t unintentionally sabotage your culture with “innovation assassination,” rather make innovation a pillar that supports your foundation.
Hold learning meetings, lunches and events that are fun to give employees a break and add an additional dimension to their work environment—one that feels less like work. As counterintuitive as that seems, it goes back to the point of employee happiness and engagement. Happy employees deliver better results, faster—so small investments of time only serve to bolster the organizational backbone.
It Doesn’t Always Have to Be Virtual
Our organization may be distance-based, but that doesn’t mean we’ve never shaken hands and given each other hugs. Regional events and coworking hubs are just two of the ways that we create opportunities for employees to meet and interact. Organizations with a distance work culture need to create the in-person touch points that define human interaction—but the key takeaway is that they don’t have to be in an everyday office environment.
Our success with coworking hubs can serve as a great way to test the waters for organizations unsure of lessening their dependence on a physical office. The investment is low and so are the stakes. Try offering clustered distance employees the opportunity to meet in a coworking space occasionally—you’ll find most are eager to take up that offer.
Encourage employees that are near each other to form their own get togethers. We have a small team in El Paso, Texas who regularly meet up over coffee to discuss ways to use their paid volunteering hours.
Working out of the office is only increasing in prevalence. Our digital footprint is growing day-by-day, and so is the online business world. Organizations that focus on creating amazing environments with the best people are going to be the ones that survive, thrive, and achieve the organic growth we all seek.
