Are new work patterns a cultural shift?
We for sure have seen many changes since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is being ushered as the beginning of a new way of life, especially in relation with how we see work. Businesses are struggling to define the best way of working: from home, from the office, hybrid work and so on.
For sure, working from home is not new, some people have done it for years. It is becoming a lot more widespread. For sure too, some sectors cannot think about working from home (hospitality, sectors that need to go to customers’ home for instance or needing to be physically with their customers to deliver their services) and for them it is about returning to previous ways of working.
But for a lot of people working in offices and not needing to be in direct, physical contact with others, a whole new world has opened up on how they work.
How profound is this change? Here, I will discuss it in terms of cultural shift, looking at the various of layers of a culture, from the external behaviours and products of a culture to the deeper basic assumptions each culture holds.
The external layer: Behaviours, products and artefacts
Many aspects of work have definitely changed: online meetings, new communication and collaboration tools that were not used before, even how people interact and relate to each other.
Ways of keeping in contact have changed. Flexibility about input (when to work) and the need to focus more on output is changing too.
The middle layer: Norms and values
It is not just how we work that has changed for many of us. It is also our relation to work itself and its place in our life.
What is appropriate or not in a work context has changed too. For instance, for many, the dress code has changed with online meetings. It is in this category because it has changed what is accepted as normal now.
Our values towards work have changed too. Working from home has blurred the boundary between work and non-work. We have reassessed the importance of each category and how we want to spend our time.
At the individual level, a lot of us want more flexibility on how and where to work.
At organisational level, the shift has been around prioritising inclusion, resilience, flexibility and adaptability. Topics of discussions and focus at executive level have changed. These are the new norms and values, what is important now.
The deep layer: Basic assumptions
This is about “What is work?”. This level is the deepest level of a culture. Basic assumptions are what we consider being true or false. It is about our beliefs.
For the sake of my discussion here, there will be a cultural shift when this deeper level has shifted too. I haven’t found strong evidence it is the case in a significant manner at the moment.
What changes have you seen on these levels? Share your stories and if you think we are in a cultural shift about work.
