Post Pandemic Has Changed The Office Culture Landscape

COVID-19 has had a huge impact on people’s lives since it’s emergence at the tail-end of 2019 and the shutdowns in 2020 around the world. Chances are that your life was impacted in a number of ways even if you never contracted the virus. For many professionals, COVID-19 changed the way work looks. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions put in, many white collar workers were worked remotely at least some portion of the past months during quarantine.

While most companies have started opening their offices back up, the past year of remote work has changed people’s outlook on work and what it should look like. Many companies are taking a closer look at their office culture and seeing if there might be room for changes. After all, remote workers tend to be just as if not more productive than those in the office. For employees, working from home offers plenty of benefits including saving time and money on commute costs. Although this specific situation of working during a pandemic won’t last forever, there will be a number of long-lasting changes to the work environment.

Flexibility Will Increase

Post Pandemic Home Office Culture Shifts

Prior to the pandemic, it was a hurdle to get many companies to agree even to a part-time work from home arrangement. Some companies would cite technology barriers while others would point to potentially poorer performance from employees. All of that went out the window during COVID-19 as companies were forced to get past those technological barriers. Of course, many struggled in the beginning as they didn’t have enough time to prepare. However, most quickly implemented whatever software and programs required to keep their business up and running.

Now that most companies have the necessary technology in place, there’s no longer a reason to prevent people from having a bit more flexibility. For employees, working from home offers greater autonomy and also allows them to be more productive. In some cases, productivity went up 47 percent when comparing March 2020 figures to April 2019. This isn’t surprising given the research that open-office setups can actually lead to a less productive work environment.

Employers also benefit from having a more flexible work schedule for employees as they can potentially downsize their office space. In areas with expensive real estate such as NYC or San Francisco, this prospect might be appealing to many companies as they can save potentially thousands every month from smaller office space. Still, many companies are not giving up on their office space entirely. Some businesses have noticed that their employees struggle with the lack of social interaction, which could eventually hinder productivity over time. In fact, many employees do want to see their colleagues more often, but don’t want to go back to work full-time. For this reason, many companies are looking to adopt a more hybrid work model, which hopefully provides the best of both worlds.

Workers Will Be More Disconnected

While having more autonomy and working from home might sound great to a lot of employees, it also has downsides, one of which is isolation and a feeling of disconnect. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for managers to know when a virtual worker is feeling disconnected as they are not able to pick this up by watching or talking to team members. Many remote workers might not bring up the topic either as they are afraid their concerns won’t be appreciated or understood.

That sense of isolation was a recurring theme throughout the pandemic, especially among those who live alone. This, of course, can have a negative impact on people’s well-being, which can lead to that feeling of disconnect. While businesses have started to open back up, those who have switched to fully remote now have to face the challenges of keeping their employees engaged and involved with each other. More importantly, less social interactions with their peers and bosses also means there’s less opportunities for employees to learn and grow from others.

In order to encourage a more connected work environment, companies will have to get creative in ways to keep their employees engaged. Many organizations have started implementing different options such as skills development training, enrichment classes, coaching, and team-building efforts. While there hasn’t been one specific activity that has resonated with all employees, it’s up to the company to continue fostering that sense of office culture. That might mean trying and offering a few different options from the list to see what works best.

The Role Of Manager Will Evolve

The increase in remote working and general shift to a more hybrid work environment on a more permanent basis means managers need to be more agile and rethink their management styles. In some companies, remote working has highlighted the issues that some managers don’t provide clearly articulated deliverables and goals to their employees instead relying on their physical presence as a way of managing their subordinates. It’s a shift that will require retraining current managers and reconsidering someone’s promotion to manager solely because they have been at a company for a certain number of years versus possessing specific skills for management.

Of course, a remote workplace also means managers will need to check in more frequently with members of their team to make sure they understand each person’s needs. At the same time, it’s important that managers don’t excessively check in on workers as that signals a lack of trust. In order for a fully remote or hybrid model to work, it hinges on managers being involved but not to the point where the remote workers start feeling smothered or that they have to do unnecessary tasks in order to ‘look’ busy. For example, some companies have installed employee monitoring software on company computers to ensure their remote workers aren’t slacking. While this might seem like a reasonable option, there’s some evidence that using such techniques can reduce overall job satisfaction and lower morale. It can also lead people to try and evade these surveillance techniques by keeping an automatic mouse-moving application open for example.

If you’re a manager at your company, it’s ultimately your decision on how you choose to change your management style. With that said, if you want full cooperation from your team, you should communicate these changes clearly and also get feedback to see if there are any issues, questions, or suggestions. By coming up with a system together, those you manage will be more engaged and productive.

Meeting Culture Will Shift

Poking fun at meetings is nothing new, but over the years meeting times have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years. In fact, many executives spend almost 23 hours a week in meetings alone compared to only 10 hours back in the 1960s. In order to curb this, there’s plenty of well-meaning advice out there to help curb the issue (schedule it to end 5 minutes earlier, have an agenda, etc), but none of this advice has solved the problem. While meetings are certainly necessary to enable collaboration, creativity, foster relationships, and ensure the proper exchange of information, it has gotten to the point where meeting culture has become toxic to the workplace and forces people to stay late or work on the weekends in order to get some quiet time to actually complete whatever tasks they need to do.

You would think that meetings would decrease while everyone was working remotely, but research conducted by Microsoft found that office workers are actually attending more meetings, though they tend to be shorter in length. While the study didn’t go into the reason why there were more meetings, it’s possible more companies are employing them as a way to keep teams connected and/or aligned. Unfortunately, the increase in daily meetings, even if they are shorter, can be taxing for people. If you thought sitting in a boring meeting was bad, you probably have found sitting in endless virtual meetings even worse as you simply aren’t as connected to the topics or people in the ‘room.’ It’s also much easier to get distracted or zone out as you can easily do something else during these meetings. The more meetings there are, the less engaged people become and that’s doubly true for virtual meetings.

While meetings probably will never disappear completely from the table, more and more companies and executives are starting to question their usefulness, especially as it is expected roughly 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely by 2025. Attending meetings might have been a good way for you to show your enthusiasm when everyone worked in an office, but going forward your work output might become the determining factor to measure your contribution and engagement. Still, meetings probably won’t completely disappear from your work environment. They might just be less important and, hopefully, take less time from your day.

Authenticity Will Dethrone Professionalism

If you’ve paid any attention to social media, you might remember a short video clip of a BBC news anchor whose child entered his office during a live section. Instead of being called unprofessional, this small clip went viral because it was both cute and relatable. Even if you didn’t have to deal with small children, chances are something probably popped up in your work Zoom calls whether it was pets, parents, partners, roommates, or maybe just your general home environment. In the beginning, many people tried to keep their personal life separated from work, but as time wore on people started to realize that they were not punished for these small interruptions. Of course, most people would try to avoid interruptions as much as possible, but many felt more comfortable and able to be themselves once they knew their co-workers would give them a bit more grace.

Unfortunately, this grace hasn’t necessarily translated to better paid leave policies or support for caretakers/parents. In fact, since the start of the pandemic around one in ten women have quit their jobs with most citing school closures as the main reason why they needed to quit. Luckily, companies are taking note and some have started to take a look at expanding and/or shifting benefits such as child and senior care, flexibility around work schedules, and offering expanded mental health support. Plus, with the rise of a more hybrid work model, around 61 percent of executives and HR leaders are favoring more flexible child care benefits that allow employees to find and manage family care and/or in-home backup child care via online platforms.

Employees Will Feel an Increased Value

You’ve probably heard the idea that you either live to work or work to live. Thanks to increasing cost of living and relatively stagnant wages, many people in the United States fall into the latter camp where they work for the sake of surviving. Yet, if given a choice, most people would rather do what they love or, at the very least, work at a company whose core values line up with their own. During the pandemic, a lot of people started taking a harder look at their job and company and asking themselves whether they were actually happy with their jobs and if it added value to their lives. After all, it’s hard not to introspect when you are forced to stay inside all day.

As a result, many people have started looking for new careers. A 2021 survey found that around 40 percent of people that they polled were planning on leaving their employers in search of new opportunities. Some of the main reasons for looking include:

Career advancement - some employees feel that their career stalled and, especially during the pandemic, they have not been rewarded for their hard work with opportunities to advance.
Benefits - with the pandemic exacerbating issues like high debt and a dwindling emergency fund, workers are looking to employers to help alleviate some stress. Almost 80 percent of people surveyed want a company to focus on providing benefits that will help their well-being such as retirement plans, health, disability and life insurance, paid family medical leave, and an emergency savings plan.
Work-life balance - with millions of people working from home for at least a portion of the pandemic, the lack of work-life balance in many companies have become even more obvious. Many job seekers would rather take a pay cut than have to work long hours and not be able to spend time with their loved ones. It’s no surprise, then, that they are willing to switch jobs to join companies whose values align with their own.
Meaningful work - we all would rather do something we love, but it often seemed like a pipe dream for many. However, with the lines between the office and home becoming blurred due to the pandemic, more and more people are starting to switch gears and look for jobs and companies that resonate with what they believe. This shift is only natural as people often tie their identity to their jobs. It has just become harder for people to tolerate a disconnect between the company they work for and their own personal values.

Pandemic Has Changed Companies Outlook On Office Culture and Work Environment

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way many companies and employees look at office culture. It fast-tracked some changes that were already afoot even before the pandemic, such as an increased adoption of remote work. It also brought to light many issues with the current office environment and management styles. Many companies have listened to their employees and started making cultural changes to match their needs.

Of course, not all companies have embraced these shifts. However, the ones that will succeed are the ones that will be able to implement at least some measures that will help their employees thrive. Those who don’t change will likely see many of their employees leave for companies that do offer them the flexibility and benefits they want.