The Harvard Business Review defines work culture as “an organisation’s DNA…the shared
values, goals, attitudes, and practices that characterise a workplace. It is reflected in how
people behave, interact with each other, make decisions, and do their work.”
There is little disagreement about the importance of work culture. Most of the
conversations today are around building a healthy one instead.
Jacob Morgan, for example, has published four best-selling books on the future of work, and
is also a regular contributor to publications such as The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the
Harvard Business Review. In one article, Jacob describes work culture as a kind of emergent
property of the office.
“It exists regardless of whether the organisation realises it or decides to create it,” he
writes. “This is the only environment that you feel. That feeling is the pit in your stomach
when you don't want to go to work or the excitement and butterflies you get from wanting
to go to work."
But, in our current era of remote work, the cultural shape of a workplace is more closely
linked to technology than ever before. And so, while there are many drivers of culture in a
company, the right technology helps to provide a foundation in our contemporary context.
The impact of work culture
Work culture has always been important. But this culture now needs to be a potent enough
force to overcome any physical distance or a lack of face-to-face interactions. As research
from the Office of National Statistics suggests, remote working is now a permanent fixture
of professional life.
In the UK, 38% of employees engage in some blend of working from home and from the
office. Many of us now work in teams where many of the members are in different locations
but employed by the same company.
In such arrangements, technology can be a means to deliberately shape culture, to
encourage communication, to facilitate productivity, and, by allowing us to work anywhere
and by accommodating life outside of work.
For employers, this deliberate shaping of company culture – by technology and by other
means – is worthwhile. For one point of context, 70% of employees said that their sense of
purpose is defined by their work, according to McKinsey.
The best cultures allow us to define ourselves in a way that is satisfying. But, even speaking
in strictly commercial terms, a healthy culture is worth the squeeze.
88% of employees believe that a healthy culture is vital for the business to succeed,
according to one Deloitte survey. Surveys also reveal that many of us (as much as 65%) feel
more productive working from home. Another McKinsey study found that, in the wake of
the pandemic, 52% of employees would prefer their organisation to adopt more flexible
hybrid work models. These preferences matter as, according to one study from Oxford
University, happy employees are 13% more productive than unhappy ones.
The first takeaway here is that employees crave meaning from their job. The second would
be that employees derive the most satisfaction when they’re allowed to do their job flexibly,
in whichever way they feel most productive.
Compounding the need to offer flexibility, employees who are forced to come into work
report lower levels of satisfaction than those who can contribute in a hybridised setting,
according to a recent report from PWC. Therefore, companies that can cater to our
preferences – and empower us to work from anywhere – will reap the benefits. A company
that leans into its technology to facilitate more interactions, more collaboration, and a
stronger culture will cultivate happier employees.
But technology can do more than connect us when we’re remote.
Emma Parsons, a neuroscientist at MIT, says that multitasking can reduce employee
productivity by up to 40%. Of course, It is widely known that multitasking can reduce
efficiency, but few of us can avoid needing to do more than one thing at a time. And we also
need to be able to switch from having divided attention to being fully immersed in a task
that demands total focus.
Under the right conditions, however, companies can make it easier to multitask more
efficiently. Businesses today need to design a fluid working culture that facilitates multitasking, collaboration, and focused work—and all this is heavily dependent on the
technology behind the people.
If the technology behind your business is set up the right way, the result is happier
employees, improved retention, better productivity, and a more connected company
culture (even when working apart).
What ‘working from anywhere’ means for IT
For most of the 20th century, working in an office during the nine to five meant that, to get
away from the office, you needed a good excuse. Most office work meant being tethered to
desks.
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If the technology behind your business is set up the right way, the result is happier
employees, improved retention, better productivity, and a more connected company
culture (even when working apart).
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Since then, a lot has changed. Now, with the right technology, we really can work from
anywhere. For your IT department, however, few words erect neck hairs more than
“anywhere.”
From an IT perspective, there is good reason for a bit of apprehension about remote work.
One of the chief jobs of an IT department is keeping company data safe, as failing to can
cost millions of pounds and months of time before a hack is resolved. (An IT Governance
report found that the average cost of a cyber-attack on a business was £2.9 million per-incident.) For this reason, the approach to building a network in most offices has been to
treat the office as a kind of fortress, one server guarding all the computers from bad actors.
Employees have now left the safety of that digital fortress. The consequence is that IT has
got a harder job to do than ever; the department needs to make sure each device is
protected, that its data doesn’t leak onto vulnerable ones and, of course, that the
employees have all the tech kit needed not just to do the job, but can do the job
comfortably, anywhere.
The term ‘fluid working’ is what we at Samsung call this phenomenon, of working from
anywhere. As research shows most of employees prefer a less rigid approach and opt for
flexible, personalised arrangements, the term ‘hybrid working’ is too binary and too
oversimplified to capture what employees really want.
Staying in touch with the right technology
But companies can refine this approach with technology in mind. Remote work has upended
how leaders interact with employees and how co-workers connect with each other. These
interactions are the foundation of work culture; sharing ideas and experiences are what
drive the essential connections in any culture.
Still, even in our technologically driven age, the biggest impact on culture remains the same:
respect.
Cultures focused on respect and transparency flourish. One survey, conducted by the
Harvard Business Review, found that respect was the leading behaviour that encourages
greater commitment and engagement. Prioritising respect really does change every
conversation between colleagues, and it really does motivate employees better than fruit
bowls.
Employers can signal respect with greater transparency. Using technology, employers can
share business results – by posting them on a public channel, for example – and facilitate
open communication in general.
Taking a wider view, most people say their sense of purpose is defined by their work, and so
the best cultures allow us to define ourselves in a way that is satisfying. Some of this
satisfaction is derived from our interactions with others. Indeed, a big part of our sense of
self is constructed from communicating with other people, as research from the University
of Washington found.
In a healthy culture, when you speak to someone at work and genuinely enjoy the
interaction (because you like this person, you like how he or she feels about their job) those
pleasant exchanges are what fuel the cooperation that distinguishes companies where
people are happy versus those that are unhappy. In contrast, in toxic work cultures, you can
see everyone as a knot in their stomach, feeling undervalued, unheard, and unmotivated.
In a word: unhappy.
Today, part of the challenge is recreating those opportunities for nourishing interactions
over the web. Companies need to be able to easily blend a meeting at the office with a few
working elsewhere, without stressing about changing a word on a presentation when it’s on
your phone.
To this end, all the devices need to talk to each other; you need to switch from one to the
other without missing a beat. You need a computer that can seamlessly drop an Excel sheet
to your phone, and back again. It’s got to be easy to keep up with your team, and that
means if you can’t take a call on a train, or in a food court, then you really aren’t working
fluidly, and aren’t reaping the full benefits of this massive cultural shift.
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Remote work has upended how leaders interact with employees, and how co-workers
connect with each other—and our interactions are the foundation of work culture.
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In sum, a healthy workplace culture happens when people work together well. Increasingly,
how well we can work together depends on how easily we can share ideas, feedback, and
stay up-to-speed on all that’s going on, no matter where we are.
Read on for four reasons why fluid working culture – enabled by technology – helps to
foster a healthy, happy company culture.
4 benefits of a fluid working culture
1. Fluid work makes most employees happier.
The opportunity for fluid work impacts employees’ happiness. We now glimpse our
colleagues with elaborate laundry-drying setups, prying kittens from keyboards, answering
questions posed by children at the most inopportune moments.
This new intimacy, as it happens, breeds unexpected camaraderie.
One study by YouGov & Microsoft showing that 56% of the cohort surveyed reported an
uptick in their happiness levels when they work from home, as it brings us closer (when
we’re remote).
Employees, when able to work fluidly, are happier and more productive, and this translates
into less turnover, lower costs, and higher revenue.
2. Fluid working makes ‘deep work’ easier.
Sometimes, employees need to take the opportunity to engage in something called ‘deep
work,’ a term coined by the author Cal Newport.
He defines deep work as a “professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free
concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new
value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
The office can be full of distractions and it’s important for some people to take time away
from the office to get their projects completed. This is enabled more than ever by the fact
that the technology is portable.
Enabling employees to work remotely without being at a disadvantage—which means, not
having the right technology.
3. When you opt for a fluid working style, your talent pool gets deeper.
Today’s technology enables us to work from anywhere, which in turn opens huge
opportunities for businesses to hire people that they otherwise normally wouldn’t.
As this article in Forbes points out, a fluid working style, where remote work is a
component, makes your company more inclusive, unlocking access to more diverse talent,
including people who cannot afford to live in a pricey city, working mothers, and the
disabled.
4. A connected ecosystem of technology best enables fluid working.
When your computer, phone, and tablet are all connected, and there are major productivity
benefits to this connected ecosystem.
Need to jump from working on your Galaxy Z Fold4 phone to your laptop? You can switch
with ease between your phone and your Samsung Galaxy Book. Just add a monitor¹ or use
your Galaxy Tab S8 as a second screen for an extended display.
And, in the Galaxy ecosystem, you only need one wire to juice up all your devices. The
Galaxy Book powers up via the same compact USB-C charger as any compatible Samsung
Galaxy device (such as the Z Fold4 smartphone or Tab S8 tablet.)
Galaxy devices don’t just work together—they work together seamlessly.
Learn more here.
¹.Wireless Display capable Windows 10 PC models and Windows 10 2004 or later version are
required for this new feature. (Windows update: September 2020 or later) Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S8
series to support this feature