Meta: Jeff Smith, former head of BlackRock human resources, reveals how to manage the delicate balance between hybrid work and maintaining organizational culture.
Is a company only as strong as its culture? Many of the world’s top business leaders — no matter the industry — will tell you so. Jeff Smith, former head of global human resources at BlackRock, is one of them. “Culture is everything,” he asserts. “It is what you stand for, how you do work, what you are held accountable for, and how it feels to be somewhere.” But as much as having shared community ethos, values, and a clear mission can be integral to corporate success, Smith acknowledges that since the dawning of the distributed workforce era, maintaining the delicate balance between hybrid or wholly remote work models and a thriving organizational culture can be difficult to manage.
How Expectations Must Keep Pace in an Evolving Hybrid Landscape
Jeff Smith believes effective team building in this brave new hybrid world must involve creating an intentional culture that reaches beyond the confines of the traditional office environment and addresses the demands of bosses as well as workers. “[You have to manage] the expectations of employees created by COVID and the remote work environment around being in the office and balancing a high number of CEOs’ desire for people to be in person,” he explains.
Even in the face of what’s likely inevitable change, many CEOs and management executives remain skeptical that workers will be as productive off-site as they were working within the standard structure traditional office procedures provide. They also worry that off-site workers might not feel as invested in a company as those who work on-site and performance will suffer. “One of the outcomes CEOs and leaders want in a company is the culture they are trying to create,” Smith allows. “Many believe, as do I, that culture, to a degree, is easier to create in person. It’s easier to have random moments of learning or mentoring or coaching or ideation and innovation if people are walking the halls and interacting with each other.”
However, as with the first and second industrial revolutions, the coming of the computer age, and the arrival of the artificial intelligence juggernaut and its near-ubiquitous implications, the post-COVID workforce diaspora is one genie that will not be going back into its bottle. “Obviously [COVID] accelerated the concept of remote work and the technology associated with it, which I think is a very good thing,” says Smith. “Now the challenge is to have the right policies and practices in terms of how and when it is used and where people work.”
Solving the Hybrid Equation for Balance
While concerns over performance and morale may hold some leaders back from implementing necessary change, there’s evidence to show the pros of a hybrid workforce may outweigh its cons. Per a study conducted by HR workplace benefits and consulting firm Mercer, 94% of 800 employers surveyed reported productivity was actually the same or higher than it had been prior to the pandemic, even operating under the exigencies of a distributed workforce.
“Historically, there has been a perception in many organizations that if employees were not seen, they weren’t working — or at least not as effectively as they would in the office,” Lauren Mason, a principal and senior consultant at Mercer, said in an interview with the Society for Human Resource Management. “In most cases, this forced experiment around remote working as a result of COVID-19 has shattered those perceptions to prove that most employees can actually be trusted to get their work done from home.”
As much as Smith is a supporter of the hybrid model, he cautions it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for every business. “In the end it comes down to the job and the company and what needs to get done,” he says. “The hard part is if you let every group and manager decide you will have uneven and likely biased processes and policies, so you need to balance that with some sort of central policy and have flexibility and exceptions.”
Indeed, for many employees, one of the shiniest silver linings to the COVID cloud was being able to realize a work/life balance that hadn’t been possible with the previous “body in the office” business model. The freedom from commuting and flexibility to work nontraditional office hours quickly became perks many remote workers were simply not readily willing to give up once the stay-at-home mandate was lifted.
“[Flexibility] shows trust and allows people to be able to prioritize things in their life in a way that makes most [of them] feel good,” Smith explains; however, flexibility has its limits. “The No. 1 thing in all of this is getting the job done and being a strong performer,” Smith notes. “I’ve seen that [managers] are much more flexible with folks that get their job done than those who are struggling. It’s very hard to give flexibility — time off and other things — when someone is not doing what is expected of them.”
Meanwhile, some workers found added flexibility left them with the unexpected consequence of believing they owed their bosses almost unlimited accessibility. This notion of continually having to justify their work output took an emotional toll. As far as Jeff Smith is concerned, when employees feel supported by — and connected to — an employer, both their performance and their outlook will benefit.
Navigating the Future of Organizational Culture and the Hybrid Workplace
From an expanded bottom line to happier, more engaged employees, the benefits of a robust hybrid workforce aren’t lost on savvy stakeholders who see where the trend is leading and are already implementing strategies to maximize its potential. “Organizations are thinking toward the longer term … looking at how they can execute flexibility at scale to deliver on the value of flexible working, like enhanced performance and productivity, a better employee experience, an expanded talent pool, and, in some cases, potentially reduced costs,” Mason noted.
“Ideally managers and organizations can be ‘outcome-focused’ more than ‘place-focused’ in terms of where work is done,” agrees Smith.
To help the hybrid model succeed, Jeff Smith maintains leadership must expand their thinking beyond the business campus mindset and find ways to keep remote workers connected to the hive-mind culture. “With fewer in-person interactions and more time on video meetings, creating a culture with intention is much more difficult in the hybrid environment,” he admits. “To do it, the desired culture has to be clear; employees have to believe in and care about it and in the end, both demonstrate behaviors consistent with the culture and feel like they belong in the culture.”
For this to happen, Smith contends company culture must be front and center “everywhere all the time” from the mission statement to the website to all company marketing and advertising materials, as well as in the content of executive speeches and their overall communications strategy. “What you do should match your purpose and you should tie the two together as often as possible, Smith declares. “Talk about it. Say it out loud, and then try to implement practices that create the culture you want.”
