I was already fuzzy on the concept of "company culture". But if executives are worried about it at the same level as "productivity" or "profitability", I'm definitely missing something.
Only in the eyes of the employer. People have always taken time out of their day for things like buying food, cooking for yourself, exercising, etc. Those things aren't burdens when your employer isn't demanding complete control over your life. And they are only "perks" in a culture where they do.
I go to the grocery store quite often and find it just a huge waste of time. We get things delivered more often but I’m not a meal planner type so it doesn’t work well. Commuting for 10-15 minutes each way to get to nearest Whole Foods is a PITA. Having someone plan meals for me is a huge timesaver at every step. Same with exercise. Great if the equipment is right there, pound some weights just before eating lunch or play a game of basketball, etc. don’t need to manage a membership, coordinate with friends over fifty messages, etc.
Totally could do those things outside of work but they take more time. Gotta go to the gym from my house or work. Gotta go to a specific park and hope there’s a pickup game that I can jump into. Etc.
It's easy do dehumanize a voice on the phone. Many people don't want to even use cameras for video calls. How much empathy do you have for a voice on the phone versus a human being you interact with in person on a daily basis?
I think the benefits of remote work far outweigh the work that needs to be done to maintain culture remotely, but it is a new challenge that doesn't have a lot of good understanding around how to make it work.
Calm down, you're overreacting. A single sentence is hardly "perfect evidence of inability to empathize" with others. Talk about "exaggeration"...
I somewhat agree with lupire: If someone only has empathy with their coworkers – who they're interacting with daily – if they can physically see them, then that's saying something.
Your posts contain one personal attack after the other. Really: please take a step back and relax.
Sociopaths are an outliers and rare. But most people empathize less with people they have not met in person (prof: the internet, even before social media).
Add deadlines and stress to that, and you have otherwise normal people behaving worse than they would otherwise. Source: me, working with remote teams for past 20 years.
Like the person above said, you (or someone) have to be actively on the lookout for such issues, or things can get get bad really fast (I am talking days and weeks not months).
Judging by the toxic office culture at some traditional (non-WFH) companies, lack of empathy has little to do with only hearing "a voice on the phone" vs interacting with "in person".
The main aspects of firm culture that make difference in a day to day life are minimizing company politics, avoiding blame-game, honest interaction and manager's support. In my experience, it is the manager who contributes the most towards either improving these or screwing them up. None of these things require you to be physically present in office. Rest of stuff like events, group lunches etc are nice to have but not having them won't impact you as much as a political and toxic work environment would.
> How much empathy do you have for a voice on the phone versus a human being you interact with in person on a daily basis?
Since when basic human decency became incumbent upon seeing someone in flesh in front of you? Are you saying that people can't behave professionally unless they are not physically in office? How do fully remote companies work?
> Many people don't want to even use cameras for video calls.
For the same reason people hate meetings - resolutions to that are also the same that apply to face-to-face meetings.
> I think the benefits of remote work far outweigh the work that needs to be done to maintain culture remotely, but it is a new challenge that doesn't have a lot of good understanding around how to make it work.
Agreed on that - a good starting point would be not use culture as a justification to force people to be in office.
> it is a new challenge that doesn't have a lot of good understanding around how to make it work.
It's been going on for decades now. Time to catch up. Good WFH culture is matter of effective management. Skills required:
- good communication (knowing how to use the tools we have, like IM, video, and yes, even email)
- being responsive (this is a habit that must be cultivated in many cases)
- focus on goals and achievements instead of distractions like seeing someone in a hallway and assuming that if they seem to be working, they must be working
Remote work lowers switching costs for employees, and makes it harder to distribute and monitor the consumption of corporate “sweeteners”.
It tilts favor in the direction of companies that are actually fulfilling to work for, and not merely “sticky” (in the high fructose corn syrup way). I think executives are right to be worried, to the extent they fall in the latter camp.
As to why they’re worried about it: if you have high churn, it means your training costs and hiring costs are much higher. And this directly impacts profitability and productivity, which like you say is what they “actually” care about.
Company culture is just a way of saying we want to control you out of work and we want you to like it.
A lot is embedded in that, some execs give it a 'very high' importance.
So my rule of thumb for that is, if they're talking about Corporate Culture, it means there is none.
The hilarious thing about office for me was most meeting including daily morning meetings still happen over webex. So nothing of that in-place collaboration crap.
We even had those staged bullshit videos with management where they tried to show how they were in office during pandemic. Basically if they can manage to work from office with their executive compensation then anyone with 1/10th or 1/100th of salary should be able to do that.
These are some examples that can degrade culture if missed for too long, so they definitely require more explicit actions from everyone.
[Edited wording]
Still, I'm curious as to why maintaining current culture is seen as important. Is there a loss of productivity / profitability associated with the non-transmission of culture?
As much as it can be corporate BS, I do think there are companies that have a culture that gives them an edge over the competition.
I worked at one place where the culture was very much about treating everyone as valuable contributors regardless of level, and pretty much every Friday you could chat with the CEO (and most of the VPs) over beers if you felt like it. As a junior it made a huge difference in how much mental energy I put into innovating and helping others succeed. Just as an example, I could see that kind of thing being hard to maintain in a remote context with thousands of employees.