In what is now known as “traditional” workplace culture, employees reported to the office each day and conducted their work-related tasks in a familiar setting with familiar people. Establishing a healthy company culture may have been a challenge for some organizations, but there was plenty of opportunity for employees to gather, interact, develop working relationships, offer each other support, and participate in on-site training and career development. Things have changed, and organizations are rethinking their approach to fostering positive company cultures.

The modern workplace

Today, a growing number of organizations are opting for distributed or virtual work models as modern workplace solutions. Employees may rarely, if ever, share a workspace. Every task that was once accomplished on-site — including meetings, interpersonal interactions, and team collaborations — has been remodeled to allow for virtual participation. While the modern office may not bring everyone together in the same space every day, it does provide an opportunity to build and maintain a vibrant, engaging company culture.

Statistically, it’s a good thing companies are finding ways to create and support distributed and virtual work cultures as part of their modern workplace solutions; 63% of high-revenue growth companies utilize a distributed work model, and employees prefer a distributed model more than 80% of the time. In fact, 68% of American employees describe distributed work as the perfect model. Of those employees who shifted to remote work during pandemic shutdowns, 48% want to work remotely on a permanent basis, while 44% would like to move to a distributed model where they work on-site part of the time.

Disrupting the paradigm

What does company culture look like now? Is it even important anymore? Traditional culture may have looked like water cooler chats and company picnics, but a healthy company culture is more than communal activity. At its core, companies are creating positive work culture by making employees feel like part of the “fabric” of a business. As employee priorities shift, the workforce is pushing business and industry to reevaluate and redefine culture and find the best ways to nurture and sustain it without the anchor of a traditional setting. Today’s company culture — whether distributed, virtual, or on-site — is people-centered and focused on engagement, communication, validation, a sense of belonging, and the alignment of employee and company values.

Curating a positive company culture in a virtual setting comes with challenges and opportunities. Many business leaders are taking their first deliberate look at the ways their employees communicate, connect, and complete their work — and taking notes to create an intentional culture that supports a more people-centered environment. After all, company culture doesn’t disappear when employees shift to virtual or distributed work, but cultural norms are created and reinforced by different systems and routines than those previously established in a full-time, physical workspace.

Modern company culture

As companies experiment with fresh and creative approaches to company culture as a modern workplace solution, business leaders have choices. They can do nothing, and let company culture develop as it will. They can find new ways to reinforce an existing culture, or they can intentionally examine, reset, and profoundly improve their culture for a distributed or virtual working model.

First, be clear about, and true to, your organization’s purpose, mission, vision, and values, and look for new opportunities to connect and align employees with your company and its goals. Areas to address as you manage company culture from a distance include:

• Employee engagement. Without the regular chances for social connection of traditional work models, employees need new ways to interact that support a modern company culture. Schedule regular interaction opportunities to encourage employee engagement, and consider creating social communication channels for informal conversations.

• Performance management. Use project management and collaboration platforms to assign tasks, send notifications, and measure team performance. Reexamine how your business values results. Shift emphasis from time spent to the quality of work produced and overall productivity. To establish reliable and objective metrics, performance expectations must be both clear and consistent.

• Clarity is an essential element of workplace communication. Ensure every employee understands and can easily access the information and tools they need to complete their assigned tasks. Set up communication channels to keep team and company leadership accessible. Establish clarity, transparency, and continuous improvement as company values, and be responsive to employee questions and concerns.