Covid-19: Prepare for culture shift.

How can you keep your office culture alive outside of the office?

The productivity of your team is directly linked to their mindset. With most of the individuals now working from home they might struggle to stay focused which in result will affect your business.

Working form home opposes its challenges on the visibility of leadership and workers engagement.

A very important thing is for you to think about ways in which you can maintain your office culture alive in the times of isolation.

Consider those elements of office culture that boost productivity in your coworkers.

- Is your leadership driven by positive attitude?

Read more: Architectural leadership in times of Covid-19: The power of positivity

- Is your team focused on clear responsibilities and roles?

Read more: Work from home transition steps for architects and designers

- Do you emphasize brainstorming?

Positive work culture is directly co-related with improved employee engagement and high levels of productivity.

It is important that in times of panic, uncertainty and change you do not let your office culture die.

It is important for you to keep your team morale and engagement on the high level, despite the forced physical disconnection. If you let your culture slip, the consequences can be detrimental down the line, resulting in further challenges in quality and deliverance.

So, what can you do today to avoid a more tragic shift in your office culture?

Add permanent policies allowing for flexibility

Most of our business policies are developed for the common environment we work under. It is quite understandable that when planning for it we don’t take into the account the worst-case scenario. When those things happen, however we get to realize the detrimental effect a lack of policy can have on our work environment. With coronavirus spread many architecture and design businesses struggle to implement work-from-home polices to keep their employees healthy.

Unfortunately many companies are forced to start from scratch and that is just fine. Better late than never.

Forced into it, take the moment to look into remote work standards and consider implementing some of the policies into your company culture permanently. Your effort alone can be very much appreciated by your workers, and on the longer run it will make your business more flexible and change-ready. By implementing updates into a more flexible work policy you will be at an advantage when hiring new candidates into your business, especially those with highly seeked for skillset, who work on remote basis.

Prior to Covid-19 remote work has already been a fast growing trend. In the last 10 years alone, flexible work environments have risen by 91%, and as time progresses and more businesses develop their digital capacities we will see more and more workers seeking alternative and more open-minded work arrangements.

Change is inevitable, no matter what triggers it. As we see with the situation today, change can come really quickly and swoop everything we know and base our existence on from under our feet. But even without those sudden challenges change is coming.

Why not make things easier for yourself now and prepare for this growing transition, as well as potential health emergencies like the one we live through today?

Get more resources to prepare yourself for future culture shifts on my Facebook group for architects like you.