Culture is More Important than Technology for Remote Work

There are plenty of technologies available that enable remote work, from video conferencing to file sharing and document collaboration. However, for businesses to succeed with remote work, they need more than the latest app, they need a way to build engagement with employees and contractors.

Culture is often overlooked in remote work because many projects are short-term and there’s a tendency towards efficiency in communication when working remotely. Both of these are good things, and allow remote teams to be nimble in their operations.

However, a lack of culture will eventually erode the productivity of even the most efficient teams. Managing remote teams for more than 15 years, and working remotely for five years myself, I’ve seen firsthand the pitfalls that occur when there isn’t an active culture in place for remote work. I’ve also seen the benefits of a healthy work culture for remote work, and in my opinion, it’s the best way to build engagement with remote teams.

When it comes to work, culture is defined in many different ways. Ultimately, culture is expressed in the stories we tell each other and our shared beliefs about the work we are doing. While corporate work culture is often the first thing that comes to mind, smaller projects can also have their own culture.

This point is vital because remote work is more distributed and variegated with smaller teams that form, break apart, and reform again to complete projects. Culture is crucial for building engagement, even on smaller teams, and recognizing that even a small project can have a culture is not obvious. It’s just as important for a small project to have a culture as it is for a large organization.

So how do you go about crafting a culture for your company or project?

Culture can be captured in the mission statement of a company. For example, a larger media conglomerate may have the lofty goal of “providing the most customized and personal entertainment experiences for diverse audiences worldwide.” On the other hand, a small project at an SaaS startup may have a more humble mission to “acquire the first 10,000 users for our new app.”

Remember, you don’t have to shoot for the moon. Both of these examples describe a shared belief that focuses the work being done. Culture can also be captured in an outright statement, “Our work culture is focused on building long-term relationships with our clients and treating everyone with respect.” 

In larger organizations, HR is tasked with managing corporate culture and reinforcing it through training and events. Smaller companies and projects may not have the same resources. The primary concern for any remote team crafting culture is to make sure there is a uniformity amongst shared beliefs about the work being done. In short, there is a clear understanding of “why we are doing what we are doing.”

Once you’ve established this, it must be reinforced repeatedly through communications with your remote team. When describing work in an email, chat, phone or video call, it should constantly be in the context of culture. 

Let’s take the example of the media conglomerate with a mission of providing personalized entertainment experiences. When this company designs a new interface for its mobile app, members of the project should be aware of the corporate mission, and look for ways to add greater personalization. Perhaps they might allow the person using the app to customize the location of the play controls. It’s a minor design change, but for the UI team member working on the project, they will feel that they are contributing to the larger mission of the company. It’s important to have that level of fulfillment, especially when that UI expert may be working remotely and spends a lot of their time working on user flows and wireframing.

For a web designer who’s working as a contractor for the SaaS startup, having a clear understanding of their mission to acquire 10,000 users is equally helpful. The web designer will then research and apply the latest best practices to create a landing page that converts visitors to beta testers. When doing so, they will know their work is focused in the right direction, and feel satisfied they are contributing to the goals of their client and working as a true member of their remote team.

Both of these examples show how establishing and clearly communicating a culture for your company or project can lead to greater levels of engagement and fulfillment for the remote workers on your team.

Culture is so often overlooked in remote work that we made it the first principle of our CREATE system at Remote Work Results. There are many elements to culture, and in many ways the other principles of our system serve to reinforce this one, because it is so vital. Whether you are a Fortune 50 company, or a small fashtech startup, take the time to establish your culture, and routinely reinforce it in your communications. You’ll see better results from your remote team when you do.