Culture Has Always Been About More Than Physical Space

Why it’s important to get work culture right in concept and execution

Work culture existed way before there was a global pandemic, a metaverse, a Zoom link, a hybrid workplace, and even a downtown office building. Despite what you might experience beyond the iPad-lined walls of a tech company lobby, read in a splashy magazine, or hear a keynote speaker say, work culture is not (and never was) just about the physical elements of people’s jobs and careers. It has always been about every decision, every interaction, every conversation, and everything seen and experienced while working.

That said, the physical office of today is different from the pre-pandemic office. Even companies with 100% of their employees back in the office have learned lessons, made fundamental changes, and embraced that life happens around work (and, in many cases, during work). The challenge now is to use workspaces differently to amplify, clarify, and reinforce behaviors, processes, and practices that add up to a strong culture.
 

I’ll go further into detail about all of this in my upcoming book, ReCulturing. But first, let’s outline prevailing perceptions of culture (what it isn’t) with the interconnected organizational systems that, when mobilized together, make up organizational culture.

What Culture Is Not

Work culture is not tied up in the personality of an organization or the people leading it. It’s not Salesforce, Twitter, or Wal-Mart. It’s not Adam Neumann, Travis Kalanick, or Elizabeth Holmes.

Work culture isn’t a list of company values beautifully painted on a wall, or even in neon lights hanging in the lobby. While those values are enticing to new employees, they fade into the background over time with employees, especially if there isn’t a clear connection to how those values tie to the behaviors, strategy, and purpose of the company. 

Work culture also isn’t about employee perks or bean bags that make brainstorming about the next new idea more comfortable. Sure, getting food at work is more convenient than making our own at home (we all learned that these past few years), and a game of ping pong may even help teams build camaraderie and disconnect from the stressors of work. Yet, while all of those extras are nice, they ultimately are not part of the decision as to why an employee stays or leaves. The reason employees leave has been researched for many years and is a combination of not being clear about the impact they are having (purpose), the expectations and work they are driving (strategy), and how to develop, get recognized, and work effectively with colleagues (culture). 

Work culture is not what happens when the boss isn’t around—or even, when the boss is around—unless you and your boss are both clear on the behaviors expected from each of you. Culture is not tied to one person, even a senior leader. 

What Culture Is

Culture has three elements: behaviors, processes, and practices that are connected to each other and the greater organizational system—the strategy and purpose. When culture, strategy, and purpose are strongly connected, each one of these parts becomes stronger.

The Covid-19 pandemic challenged work cultures to persist and evolve through lockdowns, a mass move to remote work, and a staggered return to the office, but it was never going to kill those cultures. The central reason: work culture is location and crisis agnostic. It doesn’t exist as a standalone concept; it exists between the relationships, the decisions, and the conversations employees have with each other. 

Work culture is a system with various parts that can be intentionally designed and built. Like any other system, it is a living, active one. Thus, culture is a verb. It is something we do. 

The Office Redefined

We proved that work can get done over these last few years from anywhere, and we also unknowingly realized that culture, too, can be done from anywhere. Yet, we did this by default, not by design. A few years into the pandemic, as we are all thinking through remote or hybrid working models, we also need to be thinking through how best to leverage today’s office environment that’s much less about ‘where’ people are working and more about ‘how’ people are connecting to drive ideas, processes, and practices forward regardless of their surroundings.

Redefining the role of the office is not about bringing people back to “get culture.” Rather, it’s about strengthening the cultural components we have already defined—those behaviors, practices, and processes that help us work together meaningfully and effectively. 

I was even talking to a leader the other day who said that one of the only ways he thinks employees will come back is if they offer free breakfast and lunch. I think we missed some big lessons here. Coming back to the office isn’t about rebuilding the salad bar. It’s about reinforcing relationships and finding ways to brainstorm and make decisions consistent with those behaviors, expectations, and objectives that we have defined and are working toward. It’s about reinforcing our relationships with each other, watching and learning together, clarifying miscommunications, and strengthening that trust we are building. And yes, if that’s all done over a salad or a sandwich, even better. 

It may be human nature to attach tangible things to intangible concepts in order to make sense of them, but doing so will not help us design our cultures intentionally if we lazily just rely on food and games at the office. Together, we were able to create a playbook for working from anywhere effectively. We learned a lot of great lessons along the way, including how to set boundaries, how to avoid burnout, and how to be a little more empathetic to each other. We need to take that same mindset of learning as we rebuild what culture is in this next phase of work. That’s one of the many reasons I wrote my book and created the concepts behind ReCulturing.

Let me conclude with an excerpt from ReCulturing that I think sums up why it’s important to get work culture right in concept and execution. We all deserve to be in environments that are supportive, accountable, and psychologically safe. Leaders can—and must—balance the push-and-pull that comes from sometimes conflicting needs of investors, employees, and customers…The companies that work to connect their values-based behaviors, processes, and practices to each other, and then to the larger organizational system, are the ones that have healthy cultures and successful business outcomes. The ones that don’t, will lose not only their business value but also their people—whether they are sitting at their dining room table or eating a sandwich at the office. 

Melissa Daimler is the CLO of Udemy and the author of forthcoming book, ReCulturing. Visit www.udemy.com Connect Melissa Daimler