Struggling to Identify Your Company’s Culture as a Virtual Employee? Look at Implicit and Explicit Cues (Part 2)
By Marina Mainescu, Wendy R. Weidenbaum, and Lois Hines
As we discussed in Part 1 of this article, assessing a company’s culture can be challenging, particularly in a virtual work environment. Some aspects of company culture, like the implicit cues discussed in Part 1, are harder to pinpoint, especially as a remote employee. Others are more easily observable, yet less directly related to the culture actually experienced by employees.
Still, it is important to understand these more observable cues, which we call explicit cues, because they are easy to notice and also offer a view into how a company sees itself, which is a helpful point of comparison when trying to understand where a company culture misses the mark and what exactly the implicit cues mean. Below, we review the meaning and importance of explicit culture cues and offer a few examples.
Explicit Culture Cues
Explicit culture cues are aspects of a company’s culture that are immediately observable – either because they are actually stated by the company or easily read into its actions. While explicit cues do contain useful information, they often don’t paint a full picture of a company’s true culture. Still, given that they are readily visible, and can serve as a baseline for understanding other cues about a company’s culture, explicit cues are a good place to look, especially as a virtual employee. Here are some examples of explicit cues and what to think about when interpreting them.
Stated Culture
Perhaps the most explicit of the explicit cues are a company’s own statements. What does the company say about its culture, purpose, or core values? Where are its culture, purpose, and values documented and how frequently do you come across them as an employee?
For example, is the company’s culture described on its website, in onboarding documents, or on anything else the company gives to you as an employee – like a plaque for your desk, for example?
While a company’s statements are generally aspirational in nature, they can tell you something about how the company sees its own culture. And, the frequency with which these statements come up can hint at how closely the company clings to this image of its culture, whether it’s accurate or not.
Pay attention to what your company and its leaders say about themselves and begin to consider whether those statements match your own personal experience with the company. If they do, great – you can use the company’s own statements as good indicators of what to expect from the culture!
However, if you feel that they don’t, think about where and why your company’s culture misses the mark. Many company cultures do.
If this is the case with your company, it’s important to uncover the company’s true culture, and let that guide your interactions with the company instead. And, it’s important to think about how it might be possible to recognize a company’s true culture earlier on, and in particular, during any interviews with future potential employers.
Human Capital Programs
Another great place to look for information about a company’s explicit culture is at its human capital programs. The details of these programs should be equally accessible to both in-person and virtual employees, and especially to those who have recently onboarded. How does the company structure its human capital programs, and what does this structure say about the company’s culture?
A company’s human capital programs are the programs it establishes in order to recruit, retain, engage, motivate, and develop talent. These include its hiring process, onboarding process, compensation and benefits programs, and performance management programs. Generally speaking, human capital programs can be more or less friendly towards company employees. They can also be designed to emphasize specific values.
For example, if a company’s compensation program ranks employees by performance, we can say that that company values excellence and is comfortable with some level of competition among employees. If a company’s performance management program allows junior employees to give senior managers feedback and holds senior managers accountable to this feedback, that company is relatively non-hierarchical.
In other words, a company’s human capital decisions can reveal a lot about its values and the culture it aims to promote. Think about your company’s human capital programs and try to answer a few basic questions:
First, how much does the company seem to care about its employees based on its compensation and benefits programs? How did it support you through hiring and onboarding? Does this indicate that it sees you more as a valued asset or as an expendable resource?
Second, do the company’s human capital programs promote a specific set of values, i.e., collaboration, competition, autonomy, hierarchy, non-hierarchy, creativity, innovation, tradition, etc.? And what impact do these values have on the broader culture?
Communication, Inclusion, and Engagement
Another interesting thing to consider when trying to assess a company’s culture are its efforts around employee communication, inclusion, and engagement. These become especially important in a virtual environment where communication, particularly the informal and organic communication that helps build rapport among employees and encourages engagement, becomes more difficult. A company’s actions on this front can reveal a lot about its values and priorities.
Think about your experience as a virtual employee. How easy has it been to engage with other employees? What about with the broader company? What tools and protocols has the company used in order to facilitate this engagement?
Some examples of tools that facilitate communication and collaboration include business communication software like Slack, Zoom, and Google Chat, intranet software like Jostle, or project collaboration software like Confluence. Examples of communication protocols include prioritizing video calls over phone calls or ensuring a regular cadence of communication on teams. Does your company have a thoughtful approach to remote communication?
Making it easy for employees to communicate with each other and with company leadership is the first step towards a culture of inclusion and engagement. Think about how engaged you feel with your manager, your peers, your broader team, company leadership, and the company’s mission, and then think about how the company’s decisions around communication, and remote communication in particular, have contributed to this culture.
Of course, communication, inclusion, and engagement also open the door to higher levels of teamwork and collaboration as well as closer connections among employees, all of which also contribute to company culture.
Social Calendar
A final explicit culture cue to consider is the company’s social calendar. What do the company’s social events and other team-building practices say about its culture?
Social and team-building events can promote connection and coordination among employees and between employees and senior management. Many companies hold office- and company-wide retreats, fun office and team activities, virtual or in-person happy hours, breakfasts and lunches, etc. Does it seem like your company prioritizes social and team-building activities? How has this effort been impacted by the virtual work environment?
It is also worth considering who is invited to these social and team-building events as well as who ultimately attends. For example, are senior managers invited? If so, do they actually attend? Do they interact with junior employees? Are employees’ partners and significant others invited?
All of these questions speak to how much a company values its employees and, in particular, promotes connectivity among them. This, in turn, speaks again to its values – collegiality and non-hierarchy, or the opposite?
Conclusion
In summary, identifying a company’s true, functioning culture can be tricky, especially if you are new to a company and working virtually. Culture cues can be both implicit and explicit, and sometimes what a company states outwardly is only the tip of the iceberg – or misrepresents the culture entirely. As a virtual employee, it is all the more challenging to identify culture cues, especially the implicit ones.
In Parts 1 and 2 of this article, we’ve suggested a few factors to consider – a company’s own statements, actions, and programs, as well as the more subtle realities of its employees’ everyday work experience, including when you are working remotely and are limited in your interactions with your coworkers.
Depending on the size of the company, some of these questions will be more or less applicable. For example, exposure to senior executives is going to be greater at a startup than at a more established organization, and so cues related to senior executive behavior may be more accessible to those working for smaller companies. Still, the above questions can simply help you start thinking about where and how a company’s true functioning culture may reveal itself.
And, of course, many of these questions can be asked directly of peers, after virtual employees have gotten their bearings and begun to build a rapport with coworkers. Longer tenured employees will have a better understanding of the company’s history and will have experienced both a virtual and in-person work environment, and so can offer additional perspective on everything we’ve discussed here. Remember, as a virtual employee, you have to take greater initiative in understanding your new work environment. Use all the resources you have!