The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to work in a different way as we were used to. IT departments running overtime to enable employees to work from home, installing tools, HR departments writing ‘working from home’ policies, adjusting standardized ways of working and employees attempting to reach the productivity they had prior to working from home. In other words, a lot had to be done and a lot has happened since the start of the pandemic.
Now that the majority of the working population is working from home, more research regarding the impact that working from home has can be done. Logically, there are less costs since travel is no longer necessary. To provide some numbers, by increasing the time working from home for one day per week, the net benefit amounts to 3.9 billion euro annually. This benefit is mainly driven by the reduction in costs. Additionally, CO2 emissions will also reduce with this change. Again, for one day working at home, CO2 emissions could reduce by 605.5 million kgs annually. (PWC, 2020)
Evidently, this has a positive impact. Not only on the costs made for the company, but also on the environment by reducing traffic emissions which on the long term might be even more important. Unfortunately, there is another side to this story.
Looking ahead, results might prove to be less beneficial as they are on the short term. For instance, factors that are key drivers for success in companies such as innovations, working closely together and sharing insights and knowledge, are all (for now at least) reliant on the proximity to one another (PWC, 2020). With the current changes in our normal way of working, these factors are in jeopardy. Companies should investigate the impact working from home has on their workforce and identify whether or not actions have to be taken to assure the continuity of these factors as they were in the ‘old days’.
From my point of view, these factors are all part of the culture of a company, alongside many other factors ofcourse. So to state it differently, the culture of a company on the long term is in jeopardy as well. A lot of reasearch has been done on the subject of company culture and its effects, although, I believe there is an aspect that has been given little attention thus far due to all the implemented changes. Yet this aspect of company culture is vital for the endurance of companies. This aspect considers new employees entering companies during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In most cases, the new employees start working from home as soon as possible. Apart from emails and calls from time to time, direct contact with colleagues is limited. This contact, especially in the early period, facilitates expectation-setting. BB. If a new employee spends most of his time around his colleagues, ‘observing’ their behavior and picking up signals, the new employee is more easily able to get a grip on their standards of communication and performance. Additionally, workplace engagement has a strong relationship with social interactions, which, again, currently is limited. Workplace engagement is strongly related to the quality of work, job engagement and employee well-being. All these factors contribute towards job satisfaction which is crucial to have nowadays. (Coworking Resources, 2019)
Evidently, the way an employee starts his/her job is of paramount importance for his/her perspective on the company and the way he/she is moving forward in it. This foundation-laying is currently endangered due to the lack of social interactions and less contact with colleagues. Perhaps it’s time to change the social dynamics of the online workplace for new employees so that they’re able to become part of the companies’ culture and eventually turn into a promotor instead of just a new addition to the workforce.
The options available to tackle this upcoming issue and embed these options into a companies’ digital strategy are endless, however, awareness of the problem is of paramount importance right now. Start the talk, consider the needs and aid the workforce!
References:
Coworking Resources. (2019, March 15). The Negative Effects of Working From Home on Company Culture. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.coworkingresources.org/blog/the-negative-effects-of-working-from-home-on-company-culture
PWC. (2020). The costs and benefits of working from home. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.pwc.nl/nl/actueel-publicaties/assets/pdfs/pwc-the-costs-and-benefits-of-working-from-home.pdf
I could relate quite well to this blog, having worked for several years at Amazon within operations before the pandemic started. I was the manager of a team where my senior manager had just left in February, and we had just hired a new person to the team in March just when the pandemic hit. Amazon, like many other big tech companies, have a special culture they foster which relates back to their leadership principles and can be summed by the adjective of being “amazonian.” However based on the nature of each departments day-to-day function and priorities, there were nuances to what that meant exactly for each. So although the new person we had hired was from within Amazon, they came from a different department which mean they had to adjust to this new culture remotely. Ultimately I found that the burden falls upon the colleagues that are closest to the new person to ensure that they are incorporated as soon as possible. As there were less opportunities for informal chats this translated into more work and effort on my part. To me it really highlighted the importance of all the informal discussions and meetings, alongside those formally scheduled by the manager and HR, that go into effectively bringing in a new person onto the team. Moving forward, if i had to give my suggestion, it would be that big companies should take more initiative to try and create these informal environments remotely.