In this time of societal change, corporate leaders worldwide are struggling to reinvent their company culture. Basic elements of the workplace like where, when, and how we work are being reimagined as brands come to terms with our new work culture. One major concern across industries is maintaining corporate culture in a hybrid work environment. Workplace culture was traditionally forged by people working together under the same roof. What does that culture look like when people work remotely?
As you’re building a culture for the new workplace, I encourage you to think about your culture through the lens of time. Every company has a unique time culture or a system of productivity that defines its daily operations. Interestingly, time culture usually emerges unconsciously. Your time culture reflects how people prioritize their time and get through their workloads. Learn more about time culture and see how this framework can optimize your company culture.
How Time Culture Forms
Time culture forms through subtle, subconscious processes. Before COVID, most companies didn’t intentionally set processes, standards, and best practices to guide their time. The shift to remote work has caused major changes in every sector. However, it’s also an opportunity to challenge norms and examine how we worked in the past. Rebuilding your company culture is a chance to reshape your brand’s culture of time.
Why Time Culture Is Vital
When you think about it, time is the oil in the machine of life. Anything your company wants to achieve requires time. Think of every project where you’re investing employee resources. You want your employees to innovate, connect, build relationships, collaborate: each of these tasks requires their valuable time.
Time culture in the new workplace should guide how people use their time. Your brand should create an environment that encourages and enables staff to spend their time on their top priorities. If you don’t explicitly build this framework, the resulting time culture will work against the mission, vision, values, projects, and initiatives you claim to value.
How To Examine Your Time Culture
As you examine your current corporate culture, consider how you respect employee time. You should empower your team to focus on priorities, not leave them feeling trapped by busy work or wasted resources. Think about the following elements of time culture to find opportunities to improve.
Meeting Culture
Many global entities moved from meeting overload to meeting craziness during the height of COVID precautions. Rethink what requires a meeting. Determine which meetings are essential, what meetings need to remain in person, which meetings can be held by video or phone, and what topics can be discussed by email or chat. Then build a company culture that observes your new meeting guidelines.
Response Culture
In the new workplace where many staff work remotely, response time can be a thorny subject. Set reasonable expectations for responding to emails, calls, texts, chats, and other pings. Don’t expect immediate responses, even when staff is on the job. Your team may be busy on another task when you reach out.
Renewal Cultural
Consider how your corporate culture treats time off and renewal time. Many employees blurred the lines between their personal and professional lives early in the COVID crisis. This reaction was a common crisis response, but continuing along these lines leads to burnout. Respect your team’s personal lives and help them find renewal with healthy work-life boundaries.
Nurturing A Productive Culture Of Time
The culture of time is one of your company culture’s most essential components. Your culture of time can either support your employees to deliver the goods, achieve their goals, and find fulfillment as professionals—or it can diminish your teams’ efforts, inhibit their abilities, and leave them burnt out and unsatisfied. Your team will thrive when you build a structure that empowers them to meet their goals. Don’t forget about the culture of time as you rebuild your corporate culture for the new workplace.