Leverage Technology to Improve Culture

Corporate culture is a living organism that requires care and feeding. It is reinforced by the dozens of interactions we have in the office on a daily basis. But, when we are not IN the office, how do we create and sustain culture? Humans generally desire to be connected, and that connection helps reinforce our common bonds within corporate culture.

One of the key questions that continues to arise in my mind is – how can we be physically distant, as required – but SOCIALLY CONNECTED? Here are three simple tips to help keep employees socially closer and engaged with your organization:

Enhanced Onboarding: We all know that the first day, first week or first month is critical to the success of a new employee. A great onboarding process is central to that success. With new distancing rules in place, this task is made more difficult. Improving your onboarding process used to require a bunch of meetings, process identification, content development and training. While some of that still holds true, the tools available to improve the speed, timing and satisfaction level are amazing. Your process can be captured easily through your online benefit software or payroll provider, providing consistency to the process. You can easily sprinkle the process with video messages from key stakeholders. During this period, we may be doing less onboarding than before, but what a great time to re-shape our thinking here.

Quick Hit Training videos: Distance is making it difficult to just walk by someone’s desk and share knowledge. Using software like Loom or Camtasia allows employees to quickly capture key training elements in a personal way and easily share them with colleagues. In Loom, you can shoot video with your webcam or do a screen capture with voice over and a small thumbnail video of the presenter in the corner. This allows for facial interaction with the viewer, and, even though not in the same room can build a relationship over video. You can also use Loom to do a screen capture on a training call for review later.

Personalized Zoom (or other) Calls: We’ve all been on the Zoom call with 20 or 30 participants. Even with a good moderator, it’s difficult to maintain high levels of engagement. There are many cases where it is required to have the entire team on board, but what can managers do in between these large ‘meetings’? We suggest having regular one-on-one video conference calls with employees to check in. These can be as short as 20 minutes, but it is an effective way to reconnect with people, and really check in with how they are doing. Check-ins with managers have long been a key tool to keeping the team motivated and on track, but they are now more important than ever. I have found that even having two or three team members on a call limits the desire of an employee to open up in a personal way, where they might with a one-on-one.

Staying connected is a human desire – even if we have to do it over a video screen. Reach out to us directly if you want to connect on any of these topics above.

Information is provided by Relational Advisors and written by Mike Rankin, a non-affiliate of Cetera Advisor Networks LLC.