Even Hard Times Present Opportunities to Test and Redefine Business Practices and Norms
By Janine Yancey
At a time when so many companies are struggling to simply keep the lights on and stay afloat and many employees are grateful to still have a paycheck, it may seem inappropriate to be talking about workplace culture. However, this is an essential time to have this conversation — and for corporate leaders to pay more attention to the foundations of workplace culture.
Over the coming months, amid numerous rounds of layoffs, we’ll hear many stories where businesses failed to operate ethically. We’ll hear about financial misreporting to make numbers look better than they really are and conflicts of interest as people get desperate and focus on self-preservation. We’ll hear about a failure of respect where business leaders prioritize business needs at the expense of the health and psychological safety of their employees who helped build the business. And lastly, we’ll have a heyday in stories about exclusion where the “in-group” gets even more powerful and the “out-group” gets more marginalized. These dynamics are not specific to any one business. It’s just what happens when the going gets tough and an organization lacks strong norms and practices.
It is in hard times, such as the current pandemic, that corporate cultures are defined for future years. Tomorrow’s winners take the right steps today.
This is the time when a company’s leaders either step up to serve in courageous, respectful ways — or not.
Leaders who do not step up to lead in a courageous, respectful way, may find their actions scrutinized and second-guessed in real-time on social media. It’s the first time in history that corporate leaders will be making these tough decisions under such a large a social media microscope and facing the court of public opinion. Today, every misstep can be shouted to the world through Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook in minutes and seen by a global audience and in a forum lacking context or a balanced perspective.
As thousands of employees are suddenly working remotely, it’s even more important for leaders to intentionally build connections and reinforce corporate norms and practices to strengthen the workplace culture. This is an opportunity to develop workplace skills of empathy, good communication, and inclusivity to better support a distributed workforce.
So what are some best practices moving forward to support a healthy workplace culture during this crisis and upheaval? Here are three that should serve you well:
- Imagine a global audience, public scrutiny, and Monday morning quarter-backing for every management action you take.
- Be intentional and disciplined about operationalizing respect, inclusion, and ethics into the culture, even amid the current crisis.
- Sponsor monthly programs that address tricky culture issues and that prompt employee feedback so you can measure and benchmark issues that require more focused attention to resolve.
It’s hard. All of this is. Addressing, and even changing, the culture of a company under normal circumstances is a daunting task. Trying to do it while isolated in your basement or home office makes it all the more difficult. But it’s important and necessary. Taking proactive steps now to support a culture of ethics, respect, and inclusion will be better for you, your company, and your employees in the long run.
A version of this article was published by Conscious Company Media. B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
For Companies in Crisis, How Important Is Workplace Culture? was originally published in B The Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
