Episode 73: Building an Office Culture in a Semi-Remote World

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall” your weekly podcast making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. 

Thank you so much for joining me, Randall, right here back on “Around with Randall,” our 20 minute or less podcast on the nonprofit world. Today's conversation is about office environment and this is coming from a couple of different sources, both nonprofit and for profit news. Over the last several weeks there have been several publications reporting on, and they usually focus on New York City, major corporations making determinations on bringing people back in to the office and what that means. And so today I want to talk a little bit about what that might look like as the nonprofit world has these similar conversations. I have clients trying to figure out this balance as it is. 

So the first part is just a very general discussion about how to get people, or whether or not it's appropriate to get people, back into the office. That'll be a short part. The rest of it is figuring out how to build an office culture based on two principles that are being more and more clearly defined as important, particularly if you have people who aren't in the office all the time. So the first part is, what's going to happen with people coming back to the office? I go back to the employment survey study that Hallett Philanthropy did that was published in AHP’s journal talking about this very subject, and in particular with gift officers but also applying to people who can remote in, being militant towards we're not going to allow people to have remote work access is very detrimental to an employee's perspective of the employer, so much so anecdotally, I have a number of clients who have had gift officers and others leave because of the lack of flexibility.

Considering that many of them performed at or higher levels during the pandemic when they weren't allowed to go in, I think this is more true in healthcare than any other place because healthcare protocols are a little bit more aggressive when it comes to people coming into the office. What are the requirements, things of that nature? Also what are the restrictions on outside contact with the community? One organization I work with has been pushing their employees to, until recently, not to even attend like kids basketball games because you know there's too many people there, and people have pushed back saying i'm not going to miss my child's upbringing. So the counsel here or the thought process is even if you're an old school person like me with all of this gray almost now white hair, that I realize I have to be flexible. I come to an office every day, that's what I value. But frankly, I’m becoming more and more of the minority or in the minority regarding this issue. So flexibility is going to be critical if you want to keep employees. And while certainly compensation and belief in the mission is still more important, rising, is the flexibility that an organization or a manager has in allowing their employees to remote-in if their work can be done maybe not a hundred percent but a good percentage of it. So flexibility is the first answer to whether or not we should be having employees, having flexibility and getting in and out of the office.

The more important thing is whether or not it's 100  percent or partial. The office environment isn't going to look the same. We used to think about, or at least I did, an office in a big floor and there would be cubicles and offices and people would be in there all the time. What we're going to find, I believe, is that we're going to have kind of what I call a hoteling space, meaning you go in, you occupy space but you take your laptop with you and your paperwork and so it's open to lots of different people because people aren't going to be in the office as much. And that leads to a critical question which we'll spend the final 13-14 minutes discussing here around culture. How do you build a culture when not everyone is together? 

Some interesting statistics on this issue. Nonprofit HR, which is a talent management firm, did an enormous study of many nonprofit organizations ,about 635, that they have connections to that had people that would have been out 18 months or more, meaning not formally in the office on a daily basis. What they found in that survey is that 70 percent or so work at home a majority of the time, if not all of the time, and that 78 percent viewed this as an incredibly positive benefit at the way they look at their employer. So this goes back to how we create flexibility in what employees are going to look for as we have this great resignation and turnover and people moving around, so much so at this point. But what's more interesting is is that when they ask the managers what is the number one concern you have in this remote environment it wasn't that they didn't trust their employees, it wasn't that they didn't think the work was going to be done, it wasn't that they feared that people were sitting at home eating bonbons. The number one concern was, “how do I create a culture? How doI connect people? How do I allow all of us to feel as if we're on the same page moving in the same direction? How do I build a team when I physically can't put my hands on them, so to speak. I can't see them all the time, and that really is the larger question. If you have a great culture, you don't need to see everybody all the time even though. 

I’m a little bit old school. I believe that I’ve had gift officers when I was a practitioner who I wouldn't see for a couple days because they were out seeing donors and prospects. Our culture was one that was based on accountability on trust on communication on things that allowed us to know we were all moving in the same direction to build that culture. There's two major themes, things to consider, overarching aspects that need to be at the forefront of any of these conversations. Those two are trust and communication, and really it's effective communication.

So let's break these apart a little bit and talk about moving into the tactical. How you do this? How do you build a trust when you don't see everybody, somebody all the time and effective communication? Building trust to me is like the relationship I have with my sisters. I don't see them every day. My sisters don't live near me. One's a thousand miles away one's about 200 miles away, but other than my wife and my parents, the people that if I needed something more than anything else that I would trust the most would be those two. But I don't see them as often. But here's the thing that trust was built decades ago when we were growing up and has flourished over the years. Different circumstances, challenges, issues that we've gone through and that we've been there for each other in supporting one another in our personal and professional pursuits. Trust doesn't have to mean face-to-face. 

So what are some things you can do when you don't see someone all the time? So the first thing is realizing where trust used to be built, and maybe we can begin to mimic some of those things in a professional setting. Trust many times was built at the coffee bar, the water cooler, old school the hallway, lunch. There was beyond a depth of just professional knowledge of the relationship or of the relationship. It was deeper. You knew about people's kids and their challenges and whatever they were willing to disclose. So how do you manufacture that when you don't have that coffee bar, that hallway, or that lunchroom with people in it? 

So here's a couple of suggestions. Maybe most important is setting up clear expectations from the beginning. What is it that our department, what is it that our organization, what is it that our small group is trying to get done? So maybe you have a work group five, four, three people that has a particular project. What are the goals? What are the expectations? Is everybody in agreement with those things?Maybe you're a department of a large organization. What are the things we're trying to accomplish? Maybe you're a development office as a whole or a foundation. What are the goals that we're trying to accomplish that we can all agree upon? And then, what are the sub expectations. What are the smaller things we're going to expect of each other to accomplish these larger goals?

The other part of it not only is setting out those expectations and agreeing upon them, but it's just sticking to them. There's nothing more frustrating than when the goal line - sorry football analogy or or comment - the goal line moves that all of a sudden what we thought was appropriate or going to be done over here now gets moved over here and you're like, “wait a minute, we're in process.” Sometimes it happens and it's justified. But it can cause disillusionment amongst a team like we all were moving in this direction, why did you change the rules. It’s incredibly frustrating and it dilutes trust. I’ve had a situation recently where I was working with a client and some contractual issues, and it just dissolved the trust when the goal posts move at the last minute. It was and at the end of the day. I’m the consultant. I have to adjust, but it caused distress and harm and that's not good for a relationship. If we're going to build a team, we all get on the same page, we're rolling in the same direction, whatever crazy metaphor you want to use, you need to have trust. So expectations, agreeing to them and sticking to them can be quintessential. 

Number two is policing, particularly if you're one of the leaders placing value on an employee's well-being is important because you won't see the distress on their face. If they're sitting at the cubicle because maybe there was a phone call from home and there was a problem, you're not seeing that because they're now at home. Or you hear the inflection in their voice in a conversation, you're not listening in but you're walking by a cubicle and somebody's in obvious distress with whatever's going on, sometimes it's harder to know when those personal or professional frustrations occur. It doesn't mean we should stick our nose as a leader more into someone's private business, but we should be more aware of the fact that we may have holes in all of the knowledge. So asking questions is pretty important, more so than it used to be. How you doing, everything okay, is there anything I can do to help that, can solve a lot of the personal kind of how this life comes at you opportunities to support someone. 

There's also the professional, how do you help people grow? I think it's more important today to help someone create a growth plan than it was two, three, four years ago because we don't see them as often and it's most important for them to know that you care about their future. That builds trust so ask more questions on the personal and allow them to disclose whatever is appropriate but also help people create a plan for what they want to be and do going forward. The other two are more just really tactical things in terms of trust in a daily life number one we do so much on Zoom, Go-To Meeting, Webex, whatever teams whatever vehicle you use to communicate, turn your cameras on please. There's nothing more frustrated, frustrating than we're in a meeting and you can't see anybody's face. I don't know if you're paying attention. Trust comes over time and so there may be some requirements, and in fact I’ve got a couple clients where we begin to at the beginning of a meeting and say, “hey everyone turn on your cameras.” That's kind of the expectation. The other is start on time, end on time, and stick to the task so people can trust that their time is not going to be wasted. So that's how you build trust. 

How do you then enforce, enhance that trust through communication? Number one in the communication to being effective is because we don't see each other, especially as a leader, but I think it's applicable to everyone is be open to being vulnerable. It's okay to admit mistakes, and sometimes you want to admit mistakes that no one saw because that builds credibility. They could be a small personal mistake or they could be gosh I did this project and it just didn't go well and here's why, here's what I learned. I think people genuinely, in this crazy world of ours, want to know that they're not the only ones out there struggling to figure it all out. That’s, and I’ve had that conversation on a personal level with friends in the neighborhood or old friends, gosh you got it all put together. What? Are you crazy? I’m treading water like everybody else. It just may not be seen and so sometimes that vulnerability will add an immense amount to the relationship, which can support this idea of trust. 

Addressing managers’ bias involving remote work. This is a leadership challenge. If the leader or the organization says we're going to allow this it's also important that managers support that. You can't have two standards because the organization will then create pockets, or as I think about my eight-year-old you know cliques, and that's unhealthy for the overall direction of the organization. So making sure that everybody's on the same page is important. You want to work on deliverables. It’s the one constant in the organization, what things do we need to get done and how do we measure them, and make sure, check marks, we get them done. And sometimes you have to allow process to be more holistic inside a group. You may not want it done that way in terms of how they get to the end result, but if the end result is good then how they got there may not be as important, particularly if you're not in that group or managing face-to-face, giving more people freedom to build out towards that deliverable using deliverables as the end result can foster an environment of trust that you say, “I know you can get there let me know how I can help you.” If they do it a little bit differently but get a great result that should be counted as a win and that means you avoid micromanagement. It's critical to allow people, particularly if you're not with them all the time, to do what it is they do on their own and if they prove they can't maybe that's then the next series of conversations about how you can help them. 

The last pieces are getting out of the professional and just being a good person. A good leader is trying to help people to connect and carve out time for non-work related connections. We use Zoom, Go-To Meeting, Webex, Teams whatever for primarily business purposes so here's a couple of thoughts start all your meetings with how's everybody doing, anybody got something personal to share, it's not required but it allows everyone to know that there's hopefully a sense of genuineness that I care about the group, the team. I try to start every conversation how are you, how's your family, what's going on, not because I think it makes me look good but because I genuinely care, because you can't be who I need you to be, who you should be, who you want to be professionally, if there are major problems happening personally. And maybe nothing I can do personally, but maybe I can just be a listening device person that helps support you. Try to create smaller meetings. It's incredibly frustrating when you have a, all the time a meeting of 30 or 40 people and nobody knows anybody. You can't see anybody, so smaller meetings can build credibility and build relationships in an effective way.

Also, having a process for new people be meeting the team, particularly if they can't do so face-to-face. There's a organization I’m familiar with that they have so many new people coming and going and you literally ask them what's going on like I don't know any of these people, there's no process for me to have one-on-one conversations with any of them, so there's just like a face and a name. Well what that's done is it's created silos and everybody's kind of out there on their own. That's unhealthy for the organization as a whole. Now, if you're a company of, you know a hospital with 25,000 employees, but your hospitals don't execute their daily lives in groups of 25,000 they do it in smaller groups, how do you do this in groups where people can get to know each other? Can you set up non-official time, you know cup of coffee together where we don't talk business for a half an hour we're just going to sit around like we're sitting around the coffee bar we're just going to talk, how's everybody doing, conversation goes where it wants? That opportunity to be together can foster trust in the communication channels. Trust and effective communication can really help engender you as a leader or create the relationships, internally, where everybody's moving in the same direction. It's something we're all going to have to be aware of because we're not going back to what we did. The question is how do we create the right hybrid model to effectively get people into the office when we need them and work from home appropriately? And then secondarily, how do we build trust and communication so the office, the team, the individuals all work effectively together? 

Don't forget the website, hallettphilanthropy.com. Check out the blogs, they’re just 90 second reads ,posting them two, three a week. And if you have anything for me you can email me at podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. We live in an interesting time. It's constant movement. Don't forget my favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened in the nonprofit world. When we give to other people, when we're philanthropic with our dollars, but more importantly of ourselves, we are people making things happen for people and things that are crazy and don't know what's happening, and that's the joy of giving, and I hope you feel that in the work that you do, in the life that you live. It's great for you. It's great for your health. It's great for your emotional state. It's just the way to be, and I hope you feel as if what you do every day is making a difference so you can feel great about being someone who makes something happen for somebody who's just wondering what happened. We'll see you next time right back here on “Around with Randall.” Can't thank you enough for your time, and don't forget, make it a great day.