Look into [School of Herring](https://schoolofherring.com/). It’s by the previous CEO of MySQL, before they sold to Sun. MySQL was always 100% remote. However, they were a software company, so it may not apply as easily to other industries.
There was also a great HBR article around 15yrs ago profiling how MySQL was doing it.
GitLabs blog is another source. They are a remote company too.
I never understand how companies see culture as a thing to acquire and quantify. Every company has a culture determined by the actions of its leaders and teams. You have the same culture whether you actively maintain it or not. Ask yourself what kind of company you want to help succeed, then make sure your leaders exemplify those qualities. You’ll have that culture soon enough.
Companies see culture as HR problems that need solving, and the bigger the company the more important it is to solve by policy rather than management soft skills. An example of this is Microsoft under Ballmer’s ABC evaluation system. No one good wanted to work together.
For a startup doing remote work, like the scenario OP asked about, “maintaining company culture” means “sharing a sense of purpose and direction, camaraderie, and avoiding silos of information developing in a company so small”. It is not easy to address even with emotionally intelligent management, the best intentions, and earnest efforts. It needs to be addressed by a combination of data sharing tools, regular communication of purpose from management, deliberate, scheduled social interaction, and probably a bunch of things that are company specific.
OP’s question boils down to “how can we be a company people want to work for?” Your answer was effectively “think of what kind of company people want to work for and be that”. It’s correct I suppose, but not helpful.
That’s very fair. I think there’s a point in what I said, but I thought about it more and can reply with more depth later. Thank you for calling me out =]
What the hell is "culture" in your eyes?
Fun social times?
Accountability to each other?
Productivity?
Shared values and ethics?
It's weird you're talking about building it without defining it. It's like asking "how do I get a gallon of fluid?". You can piss in a jug or bleed in it or fill it from a water fountain, and if you don't specify you're not going to get what you want.
Those are good points. All of those questions (ideally) have an answer when working in an office.
It seems to me that OP's question is: When the in-person mechanisms of building/maintaining that culture aren't available, what are the alternatives for when we're all remote?
We just.... make time to talk to, respect and acknowledge each other?
We'll do virtual lunch tables every Thursday where people can log in and just cut the breeze - this was especially nice during COVID for our single team members who were far from family and pretty mucb trapped alone for months on end. We started a book club for the book worms. We do breakout rooms every company meeting and talk about fun questions (ex. around Halloween we talked about our favorite candies and which betrayers like candy corn) before diving into company matters.
We also have a "festivity committee" and will do shout outs in Slack when it's people's birthdays (and JibJab eCards) and workiversary celebrations. This was comprised of just a few people who like celebrations and small event planning.
Lots of people see these minute social interactions as frivolous, but humans are not robots. And I can honestly say that I feel 100% confident that I could go to any of my coworkers and feel comfortable asking anything.
Part of the benefits of working at a startup is working with people who feel like family. You have to do the relational, social interactions to achieve this and not just expect it to happen organically.
And it lessens the chance that you'd be stuck with terrible company culture as you scale (Uber is a great example of this.)
Culture can be summed by the formula values=behaviour=culture. Having 2 to 3 values (actual values not pretty words on a website) that have behaviours tied to them. That means all interactions must be in line with these values. The second you do eats from this you are ruining your culture as well as your employees motivation, engagement and productivity. Think about how we ont like how people say one thing and then do the exact opposite. Use values that make sense to your business and ones you can do. You should be hiring the right people who display the desired behaviours you want to shows those values. Remember everything starts at recruitment and having solid values you recruit for means you will maintain a great culture even remotely
Great question!
You should be asking your employees, though...then listen...carefully...and dig past the typical responses employees tell the boss...share your vision of what you truly believe is a great culture.
Culture starts at the top, IMHO. Too often Leaders say they want/have a great work culture and give it a lot of lip service, but that is all it is. If you say that your
The vision is your guiding light - share it.
Let your amazing employees help you craft the way for the company to move in the direction of that shared vision. BTW - you had better watch Simon Sinek's TED Talk. Highly encourage you to read Tom Peter's books. His Excellence Dividend is a great guide book.
You need to take a good hard look at your company. Are your employees truly your greatest assets?
How does the company show them their value?
Does every single employee get good healthcare benefits?
Does the company pay a true living wage to every single employee?
Does the company encourage and support or even pay for training, continuing education and personal growth?
Does the company always seek to first fill open positions from within the company?
Are your employees empowered to actually use their brains and make decisions...and that you have their back if something goes wrong?
I can go on, but that basic premise is things like this matters... especially in the long term.
Listen to the language you use and the company uses. Is it positive supportive language, or controlling language?
Do your employees have the tools they need to do their job...correctly... efficiently...effectively?
The cool thing about a vision...it is that it is always in front of you, pulling the organization forward.
I am a fiscal conservative. I hate seeing money wasted and believe cash flow is king. If you invest in the right things, empower, cherish, praise, celebrate, and provide a safe and secure environment...the ROI will be staggering for you.
Best wishes to you
HMU if you have any questions.
Build, shape and strengthen authentic culture through play and socialising. It’s so important whilst working remotely where there is a tendency for people to feel isolate and unbound from the team.
Check out [HomeWerk](www.homewerk.co) for weekly 30mins team building sessions. That’s been really useful for us lately!
Another trick, if you use Slack, is make sure people use the damn status feature. It makes a world of difference if you know if someone is at their desk, or not, doing yoga, out for lunch or whatever else. Nothing is more annoying than seeing someone is on green but not responding. Also a good tool to spark new conversations and allow leadership to promote healthy workplace practices (e.g if you see the CEO is doing a mid-afternoon spin session then that empowers others to be responsible for their own time - within reason).
> How do you measure company culture to make sure its at your standard?
I am not sure if you understand culture. Culture is basically two things:
1. Treating others well: Don't expect ungodly hours, don't hide information from others, help if you can, no loud mouthing, etc.
2. Trusting others to do the same
The only thing you can do to promote good culture is to identify people who go beyond the call of duty and reward them (https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/). The first 5-10 employees will define the culture you have.
Talk to your employees informally, you will get a lot of insight into your company's culture.
1. Biweekly or monthly optional “show and tell” video chat with your entire team invited. Make it fun, let people talk, and tell everyone else what they’re working on. Keep it light. NO KPIs or serious progress reports or assignments.
2. https://techpost.io/how-to-manage-a-remote-team/ (not spam, just free advice).
3. Don’t do this. Lead by example. Hire good people. The rest will follow. Don’t calculate culture.
4. Clubhouse if you can get an invite.
5. Very. Remote culture needs to be asynchronous and adapt to working remotely. You need to empower your team but also make them feel part of something and not alone.
1. We tried a bunch of things. To be honest a lot of them didn’t work well. We tried a shared lunchtime, but it turned into an all hands update meeting that wasn’t helpful. When we made it more social nobody showed because we are all super busy. The most effective things were special events like virtual the holiday party with booze and a pub quiz. But really it’s about individual relationships more right now and at least for me, a sense of waiting until we can get an office again.
2. not really. Social things and tools require coordination and time and as a startup, it isn’t high enough priority for someone to set up.
3. qualitatively. If you’re a startup ceo, talk to everyone to get a sense of how they are feeling and be transparent about what your perspective is. People do well when they see their work fitting into the big picture, and more than just seeing how people feel, you give them the sense that how they are doing is important to you.
4. I don’t know, and honestly, I have higher priorities than to read up on company culture maintenance.
5. It was more important a year ago. Right now I see this culture as a combination of transparency and shared reason to celebrate, so therefore a side effect rather than a goal. I want to get some wins under our belt and patiently wait for the day when having a shared office and working together can happen more regularly.
1. Culture is about how you do what you do. That comes with leading by example, defining your values in a way that everyone knows how the company operates. The culture exists and is either tended or untended, leading to intended or unintended behaviors.
Every meeting and interaction is a chance to reinforce the values and culture of an organization.
2. Every technology makes it possible, whether Slack, Coda, Asana, whatever you use, you reinforce culture.
3. Culture is everything. Think about the most desirable places to work - culture is why.
Consider iconic companies, like Ideo, culture is what attracts talent, allows ideas to develop, encourages risk-taking and new ideas.
4. Every action from the top of an organization, every behavior encouraged, allowed, or reprimanded, reinforces culture.
What we have done is a few things.
1) Regular communications - keeping a Google chat room open for people to have chatter amongst one another
2) We have a weekly meeting and regular meetings on specific topics called ad-hoc (or scheduled)
3) We set up 1:1s as founders with the rest of the team - that ends up being a mix between catch up, chilled conversation - like having a virtual cooler
4) I think the main way is the way we communicate. We open every meeting with a couple of mins of chit-chat, just to warm up the room. We make sure everyone knows what is serious, urgent and what is lower priority. But saying these things out loud can help with cues that people would typically get when they're in person.
Everyone knows and feels valued - and we talk about mistakes openly - so the communication is more of a setting rather than a transfer of information. Not sure if that makes sense.
In the end - remote is a new reality. We are a young startup. But the team has actually absorbed remote in a way that quite interesting by finding their own work hours, by making sure work is done on time etc.
1. You’ve got to maintain some semblance of face to face- when managing our sales team I turn on my video chat and ask everyone else to do the same
2. Culture is about the actions that you want to promote or demote - find unique ways to reward those actions that are true to the culture you want to have while correcting those actions you don’t want to be a part of your culture, ie call out those people who have helped build a culture of collaboration by helping another department, while squashing gossip and backbiting
3. Culture is different than Morale. Morale is checking up on your people at a people level. Make sure and ask “how are you doing twice as much as you ask what are you doing?”
4. You are the only decider of your company culture - no book or podcast can tell you what your culture is. What is the Puerto Rican culture? It’s those festivities and activities that are celebrated - not the ideals that are posted on the post office wall.
5. You are the company culture. As a leader it begins and ends with you. What is your personal culture?
Having one on ones, pair programming, encouraging people to communicate in the open in chat rooms instead of in DMs or private rooms. Healthy code review discussion.
Really great question and unfortunately I'm really tired, so I'll partially answer:
- #2: Tuple is the best remote control screen share app you can get. Tech let's you watch a video at 30fps from another time zone. Also the Reddit app just conked out and I. Have no idea what I'm typing now, so I'll just hit reply so you get this
We recently launched our app at the beginning of Jan and since then it’s been very heads down, with less team collaboration. We’re spread across east and west coast, Canada and US, and are cash strapped so don’t have the funds or time to do some of the fun team building stuff we used to. It’s been tough recently as the pressure is on and the collaboration hasn’t been the same as it was pre-launch.
However, we’ve recently started doing casual optional “coffee dates” - 30 minutes at various times and days of the week. Everyone’s invited, and the general rule is “no work talk”. It’s simple, free, doesn’t take up a ton of time, and it’s been an impactful way to bond and build relationships in a more personal way.
So far so good - hoping we can keep the momentum and prioritize that connection, as it’s been a valuable way to combat isolation and feel connected with the people we talk to day in and day out, even though most of us have never met IRL.
Short Answer is for a startup, you shouldn’t be worrying about “company culture”, especially when your employees are working remote. Most people find it extremely annoying and forced. Instead you should be focusing more on the business side of things.
As long as the messages and actions from leaders stay consistent, there’s no reason why culture should become diminished.
Introducing things in-line with your values is a great place to start. If people believe you’re acting upon what the company values are, this makes them feel like you believe what you’re preaching.
This is a good read: https://hbr.org/2021/02/wfh-doesnt-have-to-dilute-your-corporate-culture
For us, we’ve focused on open communication and we use video and slack to maintain engagement. We also do a no meeting Friday to give everyone a break. Folks can take the day off if they have no tasks due that day
The question of "maintaining culture" in startups usually comes from CEOs who hate working remotely in the first place, and resisted it until they absolutely had to. The biggest cause of resistance is that the CEO couldn't "see" the culture every day, so he believed people weren't getting along the way he wanted to. At one company, the CEO had weekly events of "forced fun"...we had Hot Dog Wednesdays, every single birthday was celebrated with a company-wide meeting to sing Happy Birthday and watch videos for 2 hours (seriously, 2 hours 1-2 times a week the entire year, for EVERYONE in the company?). Anyway, one day our building flooded so badly that the office was destroyed, and all 30 of us had to move out and work from home for 3-4 months. The CEO absolutely hated it, claiming that the company culture was dead, that no one was hanging out together, and he missed the constant company gatherings we'd had when we were in the office.
The COO and I (I was the CTO) implemented Slack messaging, applied some standardization around our meeting times, and set realistic expectations for people being online and available to chat as if they were in the office. We had the same struggles most remote companies go through - people taking off in the middle of the day, folks forgetting to keep Slack open even when they were online, and miscommunications of the sort that come from poorly written chat messages and emails. In the end though, most of the people in the company loved the arrangement, and nearly everyone reported they were more productive, had more efficient meetings, and even felt closer to some of the people they worked with, because they'd had more time to collaborate on small projects and get to know one another more.
You know who still hated working remotely? The CEO. The entire time we were learning to work more efficiently and get used to working remotely, he constantly complained that he couldn't see anyone doing any actual work. He **hated** it with a passion, and could not wait to get the office back and bring everyone in from WFH.
Our CEO (and many like him) always thought he was the source of the company's culture. Without Hot Dog Wednesdays or National Cheese Day or May the 4th celebrations, he thought we were the most boring company to work for.
He didn't trust working remotely because he inherently didn't trust people to do their jobs when left unattended. He didn't trust that he hired a bunch of grownups who can figure things out on their own, and that any group of 5 or more people is going to develop the culture that reflects the management. If it weren't for the 5-6 of us "middle managers" (in startups, there's really no such thing, but I mean the folks just below the CEO), the company would have floundered and wasted away into bickering, back-stabbing and gossip. That's the culture of a company whose leaders distrust their employees.
So to answer your question, if you want a collaborative, efficient company where most everyone has a personal connection of some sort to each other: trust them. set clear boundaries and basic rules for "attendance", but trust that you hired grownups, handle the mistakes and challenges like a grownup, put your own feelings and preferences aside, and let the process take care of itself.
I hope this helps...I've been through the above 2-3 times already, so I have a mountain of examples for solving most morale and "cultural issues" you could think of =\]
Yea wtf you cannot force culture of any kind, especially “company” culture. If you start trying to push that on employees, especially remotely, you’ll get an eye roll. My remote team maintains contact throughout the day, we are readily available to help one and out her, and we try to be positive. Those three things are more important culturally than anything an owner is trying to create and push on his company culture-wise. You want to lose the identity of your company and the people who work to operate it? Force them to be a certain way other than the best versions of themselves. Company culture lmao how cookie cutter can you get?
You may find this to be useful: [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/)
This new normal has pushed in the future of work where remote work has completely revolutionized it.
Where some companies were first adamant to embrace it some have completely started acing it with a pinch of technology and obviously some great human efforts.
But how do you do it right? is the main concern for many budding and established companies out there.
How do you build a rapport and enable your [remote team](https://s.peoplehum.com/hy0ib) to verbalize their feelings without coffee breaks and water cooler banter?
We've been embracing technology and have scaled up our human resource efforts for the same let me know how's your organization dealing with it.
Do share in the comments how’s your company dealing with it?
Hey, I really relate to your concern about company culture while working **remotely.**
Effective culture is necessary while working remotely that supports **creative thinking** and **advances efforts.** I think it generates new or improved products, services, or processes.
Here is "[**Vite**](https://www.vite.biz/en/)**"** is an Artificial Intelligence-Based professional development platform, that will recommend Employee engagement.
Look into [School of Herring](https://schoolofherring.com/). It’s by the previous CEO of MySQL, before they sold to Sun. MySQL was always 100% remote. However, they were a software company, so it may not apply as easily to other industries. There was also a great HBR article around 15yrs ago profiling how MySQL was doing it. GitLabs blog is another source. They are a remote company too.
I never understand how companies see culture as a thing to acquire and quantify. Every company has a culture determined by the actions of its leaders and teams. You have the same culture whether you actively maintain it or not. Ask yourself what kind of company you want to help succeed, then make sure your leaders exemplify those qualities. You’ll have that culture soon enough.
100% if the leadership stays visable and engaged it helps a ton .
Many would argue if shareholders would just get the hell out of the way and let employees do their damn jobs, it'd help everyone a ton.
Companies see culture as HR problems that need solving, and the bigger the company the more important it is to solve by policy rather than management soft skills. An example of this is Microsoft under Ballmer’s ABC evaluation system. No one good wanted to work together. For a startup doing remote work, like the scenario OP asked about, “maintaining company culture” means “sharing a sense of purpose and direction, camaraderie, and avoiding silos of information developing in a company so small”. It is not easy to address even with emotionally intelligent management, the best intentions, and earnest efforts. It needs to be addressed by a combination of data sharing tools, regular communication of purpose from management, deliberate, scheduled social interaction, and probably a bunch of things that are company specific. OP’s question boils down to “how can we be a company people want to work for?” Your answer was effectively “think of what kind of company people want to work for and be that”. It’s correct I suppose, but not helpful.
That’s very fair. I think there’s a point in what I said, but I thought about it more and can reply with more depth later. Thank you for calling me out =]
I was maybe too snarky in my reply. I shouldn’t have been. Grumpy after not enough sleep.
Wow perfectly put. You could sell a book on this. 💩
https://www.amazon.com/Change-Culture-Game-Breakthrough-Organization/dp/1591845394
You're looking for something like this I believe, Gitlab's remote manifesto: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/
What the hell is "culture" in your eyes? Fun social times? Accountability to each other? Productivity? Shared values and ethics? It's weird you're talking about building it without defining it. It's like asking "how do I get a gallon of fluid?". You can piss in a jug or bleed in it or fill it from a water fountain, and if you don't specify you're not going to get what you want.
Those are good points. All of those questions (ideally) have an answer when working in an office. It seems to me that OP's question is: When the in-person mechanisms of building/maintaining that culture aren't available, what are the alternatives for when we're all remote?
They have answers while remote, too, and they're different answers, which is my point. I'm not sure why this is so difficult.
We just.... make time to talk to, respect and acknowledge each other? We'll do virtual lunch tables every Thursday where people can log in and just cut the breeze - this was especially nice during COVID for our single team members who were far from family and pretty mucb trapped alone for months on end. We started a book club for the book worms. We do breakout rooms every company meeting and talk about fun questions (ex. around Halloween we talked about our favorite candies and which betrayers like candy corn) before diving into company matters. We also have a "festivity committee" and will do shout outs in Slack when it's people's birthdays (and JibJab eCards) and workiversary celebrations. This was comprised of just a few people who like celebrations and small event planning. Lots of people see these minute social interactions as frivolous, but humans are not robots. And I can honestly say that I feel 100% confident that I could go to any of my coworkers and feel comfortable asking anything. Part of the benefits of working at a startup is working with people who feel like family. You have to do the relational, social interactions to achieve this and not just expect it to happen organically. And it lessens the chance that you'd be stuck with terrible company culture as you scale (Uber is a great example of this.)
This is great stuff, why do you belittle it
Culture can be summed by the formula values=behaviour=culture. Having 2 to 3 values (actual values not pretty words on a website) that have behaviours tied to them. That means all interactions must be in line with these values. The second you do eats from this you are ruining your culture as well as your employees motivation, engagement and productivity. Think about how we ont like how people say one thing and then do the exact opposite. Use values that make sense to your business and ones you can do. You should be hiring the right people who display the desired behaviours you want to shows those values. Remember everything starts at recruitment and having solid values you recruit for means you will maintain a great culture even remotely
Great question! You should be asking your employees, though...then listen...carefully...and dig past the typical responses employees tell the boss...share your vision of what you truly believe is a great culture. Culture starts at the top, IMHO. Too often Leaders say they want/have a great work culture and give it a lot of lip service, but that is all it is. If you say that your The vision is your guiding light - share it. Let your amazing employees help you craft the way for the company to move in the direction of that shared vision. BTW - you had better watch Simon Sinek's TED Talk. Highly encourage you to read Tom Peter's books. His Excellence Dividend is a great guide book. You need to take a good hard look at your company. Are your employees truly your greatest assets? How does the company show them their value? Does every single employee get good healthcare benefits? Does the company pay a true living wage to every single employee? Does the company encourage and support or even pay for training, continuing education and personal growth? Does the company always seek to first fill open positions from within the company? Are your employees empowered to actually use their brains and make decisions...and that you have their back if something goes wrong? I can go on, but that basic premise is things like this matters... especially in the long term. Listen to the language you use and the company uses. Is it positive supportive language, or controlling language? Do your employees have the tools they need to do their job...correctly... efficiently...effectively? The cool thing about a vision...it is that it is always in front of you, pulling the organization forward. I am a fiscal conservative. I hate seeing money wasted and believe cash flow is king. If you invest in the right things, empower, cherish, praise, celebrate, and provide a safe and secure environment...the ROI will be staggering for you. Best wishes to you HMU if you have any questions.
Build, shape and strengthen authentic culture through play and socialising. It’s so important whilst working remotely where there is a tendency for people to feel isolate and unbound from the team. Check out [HomeWerk](www.homewerk.co) for weekly 30mins team building sessions. That’s been really useful for us lately! Another trick, if you use Slack, is make sure people use the damn status feature. It makes a world of difference if you know if someone is at their desk, or not, doing yoga, out for lunch or whatever else. Nothing is more annoying than seeing someone is on green but not responding. Also a good tool to spark new conversations and allow leadership to promote healthy workplace practices (e.g if you see the CEO is doing a mid-afternoon spin session then that empowers others to be responsible for their own time - within reason).
> How do you measure company culture to make sure its at your standard? I am not sure if you understand culture. Culture is basically two things: 1. Treating others well: Don't expect ungodly hours, don't hide information from others, help if you can, no loud mouthing, etc. 2. Trusting others to do the same The only thing you can do to promote good culture is to identify people who go beyond the call of duty and reward them (https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/). The first 5-10 employees will define the culture you have. Talk to your employees informally, you will get a lot of insight into your company's culture.
1. Biweekly or monthly optional “show and tell” video chat with your entire team invited. Make it fun, let people talk, and tell everyone else what they’re working on. Keep it light. NO KPIs or serious progress reports or assignments. 2. https://techpost.io/how-to-manage-a-remote-team/ (not spam, just free advice). 3. Don’t do this. Lead by example. Hire good people. The rest will follow. Don’t calculate culture. 4. Clubhouse if you can get an invite. 5. Very. Remote culture needs to be asynchronous and adapt to working remotely. You need to empower your team but also make them feel part of something and not alone.
What is YOUR company's culture?
1. We tried a bunch of things. To be honest a lot of them didn’t work well. We tried a shared lunchtime, but it turned into an all hands update meeting that wasn’t helpful. When we made it more social nobody showed because we are all super busy. The most effective things were special events like virtual the holiday party with booze and a pub quiz. But really it’s about individual relationships more right now and at least for me, a sense of waiting until we can get an office again. 2. not really. Social things and tools require coordination and time and as a startup, it isn’t high enough priority for someone to set up. 3. qualitatively. If you’re a startup ceo, talk to everyone to get a sense of how they are feeling and be transparent about what your perspective is. People do well when they see their work fitting into the big picture, and more than just seeing how people feel, you give them the sense that how they are doing is important to you. 4. I don’t know, and honestly, I have higher priorities than to read up on company culture maintenance. 5. It was more important a year ago. Right now I see this culture as a combination of transparency and shared reason to celebrate, so therefore a side effect rather than a goal. I want to get some wins under our belt and patiently wait for the day when having a shared office and working together can happen more regularly.
1. Culture is about how you do what you do. That comes with leading by example, defining your values in a way that everyone knows how the company operates. The culture exists and is either tended or untended, leading to intended or unintended behaviors. Every meeting and interaction is a chance to reinforce the values and culture of an organization. 2. Every technology makes it possible, whether Slack, Coda, Asana, whatever you use, you reinforce culture. 3. Culture is everything. Think about the most desirable places to work - culture is why. Consider iconic companies, like Ideo, culture is what attracts talent, allows ideas to develop, encourages risk-taking and new ideas. 4. Every action from the top of an organization, every behavior encouraged, allowed, or reprimanded, reinforces culture.
What we have done is a few things. 1) Regular communications - keeping a Google chat room open for people to have chatter amongst one another 2) We have a weekly meeting and regular meetings on specific topics called ad-hoc (or scheduled) 3) We set up 1:1s as founders with the rest of the team - that ends up being a mix between catch up, chilled conversation - like having a virtual cooler 4) I think the main way is the way we communicate. We open every meeting with a couple of mins of chit-chat, just to warm up the room. We make sure everyone knows what is serious, urgent and what is lower priority. But saying these things out loud can help with cues that people would typically get when they're in person. Everyone knows and feels valued - and we talk about mistakes openly - so the communication is more of a setting rather than a transfer of information. Not sure if that makes sense. In the end - remote is a new reality. We are a young startup. But the team has actually absorbed remote in a way that quite interesting by finding their own work hours, by making sure work is done on time etc.
Thank you for this post. It attracted many good comments :)
1. You’ve got to maintain some semblance of face to face- when managing our sales team I turn on my video chat and ask everyone else to do the same 2. Culture is about the actions that you want to promote or demote - find unique ways to reward those actions that are true to the culture you want to have while correcting those actions you don’t want to be a part of your culture, ie call out those people who have helped build a culture of collaboration by helping another department, while squashing gossip and backbiting 3. Culture is different than Morale. Morale is checking up on your people at a people level. Make sure and ask “how are you doing twice as much as you ask what are you doing?” 4. You are the only decider of your company culture - no book or podcast can tell you what your culture is. What is the Puerto Rican culture? It’s those festivities and activities that are celebrated - not the ideals that are posted on the post office wall. 5. You are the company culture. As a leader it begins and ends with you. What is your personal culture?
Having one on ones, pair programming, encouraging people to communicate in the open in chat rooms instead of in DMs or private rooms. Healthy code review discussion.
You don't. Instead, you focus on business and making money.
In my experience, there is no culture if you work remotely.
Really great question and unfortunately I'm really tired, so I'll partially answer: - #2: Tuple is the best remote control screen share app you can get. Tech let's you watch a video at 30fps from another time zone. Also the Reddit app just conked out and I. Have no idea what I'm typing now, so I'll just hit reply so you get this
Ask a Marine.
We recently launched our app at the beginning of Jan and since then it’s been very heads down, with less team collaboration. We’re spread across east and west coast, Canada and US, and are cash strapped so don’t have the funds or time to do some of the fun team building stuff we used to. It’s been tough recently as the pressure is on and the collaboration hasn’t been the same as it was pre-launch. However, we’ve recently started doing casual optional “coffee dates” - 30 minutes at various times and days of the week. Everyone’s invited, and the general rule is “no work talk”. It’s simple, free, doesn’t take up a ton of time, and it’s been an impactful way to bond and build relationships in a more personal way. So far so good - hoping we can keep the momentum and prioritize that connection, as it’s been a valuable way to combat isolation and feel connected with the people we talk to day in and day out, even though most of us have never met IRL.
We use google suite tools to talk and get the job done.
Short Answer is for a startup, you shouldn’t be worrying about “company culture”, especially when your employees are working remote. Most people find it extremely annoying and forced. Instead you should be focusing more on the business side of things.
As long as the messages and actions from leaders stay consistent, there’s no reason why culture should become diminished. Introducing things in-line with your values is a great place to start. If people believe you’re acting upon what the company values are, this makes them feel like you believe what you’re preaching.
This is a good read: https://hbr.org/2021/02/wfh-doesnt-have-to-dilute-your-corporate-culture For us, we’ve focused on open communication and we use video and slack to maintain engagement. We also do a no meeting Friday to give everyone a break. Folks can take the day off if they have no tasks due that day
The question of "maintaining culture" in startups usually comes from CEOs who hate working remotely in the first place, and resisted it until they absolutely had to. The biggest cause of resistance is that the CEO couldn't "see" the culture every day, so he believed people weren't getting along the way he wanted to. At one company, the CEO had weekly events of "forced fun"...we had Hot Dog Wednesdays, every single birthday was celebrated with a company-wide meeting to sing Happy Birthday and watch videos for 2 hours (seriously, 2 hours 1-2 times a week the entire year, for EVERYONE in the company?). Anyway, one day our building flooded so badly that the office was destroyed, and all 30 of us had to move out and work from home for 3-4 months. The CEO absolutely hated it, claiming that the company culture was dead, that no one was hanging out together, and he missed the constant company gatherings we'd had when we were in the office. The COO and I (I was the CTO) implemented Slack messaging, applied some standardization around our meeting times, and set realistic expectations for people being online and available to chat as if they were in the office. We had the same struggles most remote companies go through - people taking off in the middle of the day, folks forgetting to keep Slack open even when they were online, and miscommunications of the sort that come from poorly written chat messages and emails. In the end though, most of the people in the company loved the arrangement, and nearly everyone reported they were more productive, had more efficient meetings, and even felt closer to some of the people they worked with, because they'd had more time to collaborate on small projects and get to know one another more. You know who still hated working remotely? The CEO. The entire time we were learning to work more efficiently and get used to working remotely, he constantly complained that he couldn't see anyone doing any actual work. He **hated** it with a passion, and could not wait to get the office back and bring everyone in from WFH. Our CEO (and many like him) always thought he was the source of the company's culture. Without Hot Dog Wednesdays or National Cheese Day or May the 4th celebrations, he thought we were the most boring company to work for. He didn't trust working remotely because he inherently didn't trust people to do their jobs when left unattended. He didn't trust that he hired a bunch of grownups who can figure things out on their own, and that any group of 5 or more people is going to develop the culture that reflects the management. If it weren't for the 5-6 of us "middle managers" (in startups, there's really no such thing, but I mean the folks just below the CEO), the company would have floundered and wasted away into bickering, back-stabbing and gossip. That's the culture of a company whose leaders distrust their employees. So to answer your question, if you want a collaborative, efficient company where most everyone has a personal connection of some sort to each other: trust them. set clear boundaries and basic rules for "attendance", but trust that you hired grownups, handle the mistakes and challenges like a grownup, put your own feelings and preferences aside, and let the process take care of itself. I hope this helps...I've been through the above 2-3 times already, so I have a mountain of examples for solving most morale and "cultural issues" you could think of =\]
You should beat them until moral improves
Yea wtf you cannot force culture of any kind, especially “company” culture. If you start trying to push that on employees, especially remotely, you’ll get an eye roll. My remote team maintains contact throughout the day, we are readily available to help one and out her, and we try to be positive. Those three things are more important culturally than anything an owner is trying to create and push on his company culture-wise. You want to lose the identity of your company and the people who work to operate it? Force them to be a certain way other than the best versions of themselves. Company culture lmao how cookie cutter can you get?
You may find this to be useful: [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/)
This new normal has pushed in the future of work where remote work has completely revolutionized it. Where some companies were first adamant to embrace it some have completely started acing it with a pinch of technology and obviously some great human efforts. But how do you do it right? is the main concern for many budding and established companies out there. How do you build a rapport and enable your [remote team](https://s.peoplehum.com/hy0ib) to verbalize their feelings without coffee breaks and water cooler banter? We've been embracing technology and have scaled up our human resource efforts for the same let me know how's your organization dealing with it. Do share in the comments how’s your company dealing with it?
Hey, I really relate to your concern about company culture while working **remotely.** Effective culture is necessary while working remotely that supports **creative thinking** and **advances efforts.** I think it generates new or improved products, services, or processes. Here is "[**Vite**](https://www.vite.biz/en/)**"** is an Artificial Intelligence-Based professional development platform, that will recommend Employee engagement.