Two-plus years into the pandemic, many leaders worry that remote and hybrid work are undermining their organizations’ culture. Their concerns aren’t entirely misplaced: A 2022 global study by the research and advisory firm Gartner found that just 25% of remote or hybrid knowledge workers feel connected to their company’s culture. But forcing employees back to the office is risky, as CEOs including Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon have discovered firsthand. Companies should take another tack.
“I find it ironic when leaders say they need to bring workers back to the office because of culture,” says Alexia Cambon, a research director in Gartner’s HR practice and a principal author of the study. “They’re going to get the opposite of what they hope for. Instead of viewing hybrid work as a disruption to the cultural experience, leaders should see it as an opportunity to build culture differently.”
Culture can be evaluated on the basis of two components, Cambon explains: alignment (meaning that employees know what the culture is and believe that it is right for the firm) and connectedness (they identify with and care about the culture). A Gartner survey of more than 4,500 knowledge workers and 200 HR leaders showed that in-office mandates drove connectedness sharply down. Among employees with “radical flexibility” (defined as considerable freedom over location, schedule, work volume, team, and projects), 53% reported a high degree of connectedness, whereas just 18% of those with low flexibility did so.
“Hybrid Work Balances the Requirements of the Job with Personal Flexibility”
Over the course of the pandemic, almost all the 6,500 global associates of Acushnet—the parent company of golf brands Titleist and FootJoy—were told not to come in to work, and manufacturing shut down. The decision to focus on health and safety was easy, says chief people officer Brendan Reidy. Determining how and when people should return was much harder. Reidy spoke with HBR about how Acushnet’s strong culture embraces hybrid work arrangements. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.
Doug Levy
How did you decide when to reopen?
Shortly after the shutdown, we experienced a huge uplift in business as people flocked to outdoor recreation. The question became: How do we keep our associates safe while meeting our customers’ growing needs? Our manufacturing operations reopened in accordance with local and state guidelines and when we could ensure a safe work environment. As for our office-based associates, we have always empowered our leaders around the world to make decisions in the context of their local businesses. So as things began to improve, we let them use their own judgment about associates’ returns, as long as they were in accordance with global health and safety guidelines. We determined at the corporate level that our future was with hybrid work.
How do you define “hybrid”?
Our goal is a productive, engaged, and passionate workforce and a workplace that encourages meaningful collaboration. We’re not designing things so that associates will bump into each other in the hall; we’re designing them so that groups come together for specific types of tasks. You can share a prototype of a shoe remotely, but at a certain point team members need to hold the shoe and feel the leather and so on. A special piece of our culture happens when we gather, and we want to continue that. Some of our associates, particularly in manufacturing and R&D, will be on-site because their jobs require it. Others will come in every day because they prefer it or occasionally for meetings or to use office resources. Hybrid work balances the requirements of the job with personal flexibility.
So full-time office work is not essential to culture?
Every company is different. But hybrid doesn’t mean business as usual except with only half the associates present. You need to create a new reality where each in-person interaction is intentional and collaboration can happen more effectively. That’s more beneficial to building culture than the old watercooler chats ever were.
Are you concerned that remote workers will shirk?
No. We take pride in the long tenure of most of our associates. We lead with trust, recognizing that associates’ situations differ.
How do you enculturate new hires if they don’t spend much time in the office?
The key is to distinguish between macro- and microcultures. We consistently communicate our core values, particularly during onboarding. They’re also reflected in our performance management systems. But we lean on managers to guide new hires and orient them to team norms; we’ve implemented new training to build their capabilities in that area. In a hybrid world, associates have fewer but deeper interactions. Their relationship with their manager is even more important now.
What lessons can you share?
Really listen to associates. Ask whether they have the tools and support they need to succeed. Is information being shared? Are new technologies working? It is easy for problems to go undiscovered in a hybrid world. You have to pay close attention and include associates in creating ways to best navigate the new work arrangement.
That’s important, the research shows, because more-connected workers perform at a higher level than others (by as much as 37%) and are 36% more likely to stay with the organization. In another Gartner survey, half of knowledge workers said they would jump ship if their company rescinded their Covid-era flexibility. “Some CEOs may think that workers will grumble a bit but eventually habituate to a full-time return,” Cambon says. “Without a sense of connectedness, though, they have nothing to stop them from going to a less-rigid company.”
Before the pandemic, firms tended to focus their culture-building efforts on alignment, trusting that connectedness would occur more or less by osmosis. “Leaders hoped that the way offices were designed and decorated and the frequent interactions among workers would foster an emotional connection with the organization,” Cambon says. That approach had limitations even before the pandemic, she adds, and it is obviously insufficient in a world where employees spend 65% less time in offices than they did before the pandemic.
The researchers suggest three strategies for driving connectedness among hybrid and far-flung workers.
1. Shift from diffusing culture through the office to diffusing it through the work itself.
Managers often worry that remote workers’ productivity will suffer because of interruptions and distractions at home. In fact just the opposite happens: People often have more time for deep work, and productivity soars. This points to a valuable opportunity for employers to instill culture through daily tasks. “When you’re home, you have a more intimate relationship with work,” Cambon says. “Every time you engage in a task, you should see the corporate culture reflected in it.”
Leaders should start by auditing the firm’s work processes to make sure they are compatible with the intended culture, the researchers suggest. “Say you want your firm to be innovative, forward-thinking, and fast-paced,” Cambon says. “If your methodologies are bureaucratic and your systems have constant technical glitches, that will undermine the culture.”
Companies should help employees see that their value comes from the role they perform, not their physical location. For example, Virgin Money, a financial-services company, identifies its call center workers as the “voice of the company.” Employees use an app to pinpoint what they most value in their work and then talk with their managers about how to adjust their roles to reflect those priorities. Companies should also encourage teams to set the rhythms for how work gets done rather than operate under manager-directed norms.
2. Connect through emotional proximity, not physical proximity.
The view that in-office interactions sustain culture confuses physical proximity with the more important sensation of emotional proximity, the researchers argue. “Physical proximity is being in the same space as another individual—being seen,” they write. “Emotional proximity is being of importance to others—feeling seen.” One survey showed that emotional proximity increased employees’ connectedness to their workplace culture by 27%, while physical proximity had no impact.
Because remote and hybrid employees have fewer workplace interactions, each exchange makes a stronger impact. That heightens the imperative to identify and remove toxic workers, especially those in positions of influence. It also means that companies should refrain from requiring people to attend meetings unless they’re truly needed. The more employees feel that their contributions are valuable, the more connected to the culture they become.
Finally, leaders can create moments of emotional proximity by helping remote employees see how their work connects to the company mission. TBS, a pharmaceutical company based in Japan, uses role-play techniques during virtual onboarding to help people build an emotional connection to the firm from the start. New hires are assigned a medical condition that can be treated by a TBS drug and are asked to behave as a patient would. Someone assigned a gastrointestinal disorder, for example, would be pinged frequently for a bathroom break, thus simulating the inconvenience and discomfort patients endure. New employees also interview patients about how TBS offerings have improved their quality of life. It’s not about heaping praise on people, says Cambon. “It’s about ensuring that employees understand the value of their work to the organization and beyond.”
3. Shift from optimizing corporate culture to fostering microcultures.
Multinationals have long faced the challenge of creating a strong corporate culture while also allowing local microcultures to thrive. With hybrid work splintering workforces into more-autonomous cells, all companies must now strike that balance. The research suggests that leaders should favor somewhat devolved control: Survey respondents reported that team-level experiences increased connectedness substantially more than enterprisewide initiatives did. Royal DSM, a Dutch health and nutrition company, now treats the culture as a flotilla of independently piloted ships rather than a single tanker. “The company provides the flotilla with guidance to sail in the right direction, but it does not prescribe the norms and behaviors aboard each boat,” the researchers write.
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The pandemic has radically changed how employees experience corporate culture, and firms must embrace the new reality. “By relying less on osmosis to drive connectedness and more on intentionality,” the researchers write, “leaders will see outsized impact on performance and intent to stay.”
About the research: “Culture in a Hybrid World,” by Gartner (white paper).