Let’s face it, the world will never be going back to normal. We’ve experienced such a shift in the way things are done, I truly believe there is no way to completely reverse it at this point. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think we have all learned a lot about ourselves and our businesses. I think many people are realizing that working remotely can actually work. I am not just talking about the 3 person company. Very large Fortune 500 companies have also realized this and are potentially making permanent changes to their business model.
I am a firm believer there are countless advantages to running your business remotely. However, what I wanted to touch on today was the one major drawback to running a remote business.
How do you build a company culture if everyone is working from home?
I am not writing this article because I have the solution. I am simply stating that companies are going to have to figure this out if they want to let their employees work from home indefinitely. If you are going to make this decision, you better have an answer to this question before making the change.
Nothing can replace human interaction. There is just something about sitting across the table from someone or sharing an office that cannot be replicated. So how do we go about creating the company culture we want if our employees won’t be interacting in person? I honestly don’t know.
While I may not have the answer, I am not saying it is impossible. What I am saying is that it is going to have to be more intentional than ever. It seems like in an office it is much easier to control. You can have your finger on the “pulse” of the office when everyone is there and interacting. But now that everyone is working from home, how do you monitor that?
This is a hard question to answer but one that will need to be answered. Many businesses have already stated that they are going remote indefinitely. Again, I see plenty of advantages to this, the culture piece is certainly challenging.
Where do you stand with your business? Have you decided to go completely remote or are you still waiting to see how things play out? If you have gone remote, how would you address the company culture question?
I genuinely am interested in hearing some responses to this. I do have a few thoughts on how this could be achieved but I wanted to write more in an effort to point out something that needs to be addressed, not offer solutions right now.
