Remote Culture: New Challenges in a Virtual World 1/2

Lars Nielsen (00:03.008) Welcome to Cultures from Hell. I'm your host Lars, and today we are diving into a topic that's reshaping the modern workplace. Remote culture, new challenges in a virtual world. How do we build and maintain a strong company culture when your teams are distributed? We'll exploring We'll be exploring the unique, let's do that, I'm gonna do it again. I got too excited. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:39.934) We need to remember that you need to tell me how the things work out with your co-founders. They wanted to fuck you over. Lars Nielsen (00:47.527) fuck yeah. Let's do that after. Lars Nielsen (00:54.156) Welcome back to... Cultures From Hell I'm your host Lars, and today we are diving into a topic that's reshaping the modern workplace, remote culture, new challenges in a virtual world. How do we build and maintain a strong company culture when your teams are distributed? We'll be exploring the unique leadership and communication hurdles and crucially, how to overcome them. And who better to guide us then Paulina, co-founder of Culture Code Foundation and our show's expert on company culture. Paulina, welcome. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:41.646) Thank you. Lars Nielsen (01:44.682) Okay, cool Paulina. I'm looking forward to this because where we met like in SolveMate, the company where we actually met for the first time, I joined that during COVID. So like that was my experience with like a complete remote culture and what an experience it was in both good and bad. I would actually say mostly good. SolveMate was really, really good. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:59.95) Mmm. Lars Nielsen (02:13.6) and handling that. But yeah, let's dive deep. From your perspective at Culture Code Foundation, what's one surprising thing you've learned about company culture since the massive shift to remote work? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (02:30.232) I mean, maybe it's not, it's not that surprising. but because I see so many companies still doing a really poor job at it, I would say even after five years of doing this, it is maybe a bit surprising that it's still been done so, so, so badly in so many places. So if you do have a remote or a hybrid culture and culture nowadays needs way more intention and attention than ever before. because it is hard to work on maintaining a great culture in such a remote or hybrid setting, because you have to make up for things that seem completely normal when you're in an in-office setting. And I believe that many companies, when they went remote or hybrid, were confronted with the weaker sides of their cultures for the very first time. Because this kind of environment exacerbated all problems that for every company, right? Like I'm talking cultural problems here, obviously I'm not talking financial economic things. And I also think that, that this is one of the main reasons why so many companies currently are asking their employees to return back to the office because they still don't know how to fix what's actually wrong with their culture. Lars Nielsen (04:00.226) Very good point. And I see that quite a lot on LinkedIn that people are like talking about, like you're saying that they have to go back to the office now and so on. So it is kind of having this shift back to having everybody come into the college, coming into the office, right. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:19.106) Yes, there definitely is this shift and we'll talk about it. Lars Nielsen (04:25.964) Yeah, we'll talk about it. Okay, Pauline, so many of our listeners are grappling with this. What do you see as the most significant and unique challenges company faces when trying to establish or maintain a vibrant culture in a fully remote or hybrid setting? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:43.7) Mm-hmm. so for me, it is very clear and I, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in another episode before. The fact that real connections do need physical attention and interaction is just something that we cannot deny. I'm a huge fan of hybrid and remote work. I've been working remotely and hybridly for the past seven years, and I've actually even led teams remotely way before COVID. So. I'm, I'm a huge fan of it and I know that it works, but I also know from personal experience and I see this time and time again, that you need at least sporadically time in person. And that is something that's a lot of companies struggle with because they jumped on the opportunity to really save money in rent, for example. And even. and forget or neglect that even for the remote environments need to set aside dedicated time and budget for their people to meet in person. And another challenge that I see is that in this kind of environment, you need to pay even closer attention to your team's mental health when they're working remotely, because in the thrive for effectiveness. many small moments of checking in with colleagues or teammates that would usually just happen on the fly, get lost when all the interactions happen virtually. And on top of that, and that is something that super, super many companies and individuals just don't know about and ignore, is that the filters and fake backdrops in the background make it much harder for your yeah for the person you're talking to to read your facial expression, to read your body language and therefore judge your mood correctly or actually yeah get a feel for what's going on with you. Lars Nielsen (06:54.57) I didn't know that. That is interesting. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (06:56.311) Yeah, it is. Yeah, it really does. mean, all of us, guess all of us by now, because the software just does it automatically, right? Every software does put some sort of filter on the faces and it really impacts the facial expressions. And so much of our interaction depends on reading those small cues in the facial expressions in the body language. And for example, you might have noticed that with me, my gestures. Lars Nielsen (07:24.736) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (07:28.588) are very close to my face all the time when I'm, when I'm on a zoom call, right? So I would, and in an interpersonal interaction, my body language would be far further down. It would rather be on the, on the, yeah, on my, on my tummy or, or that, that's that height of my body. Right. And when I, when I'm on a zoom call for everyone who's just listening to this and doesn't watch the video, my hands are below. Lars Nielsen (07:33.944) Yes. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (07:55.114) above my chest and close to my face all the time. And that is an important psychological factor in here because our reptile brain gets afraid if I can't see the hands of the person I interact with because they could be holding a weapon. It's just super basic, archaic brain functionality. And therefore I take extra care to make sure that the people I talk to on a Zoom call can see my hands very, very frequently. so that I can give them, so that I can give them a bit of a reinsurance. Lars Nielsen (08:36.28) keep my hands like this for the rest of the episode. Lars Nielsen (08:44.174) Okay, cool. A very interesting fact. I'm going to be very suspicious where everybody I talk on from from here on if they have like a filter and I can't see the hands, it's gonna be like, hey, you can't do that. Have to turn off that filter. Okay, so Pauline, beyond the obvious logistical hurdles, what are some of the less visible, perhaps emotional or psychological impacts on employees when a strong remote culture is lacking? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (09:10.222) Mm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (09:13.686) Yeah. I mean, I've just talked about some of those and, we definitely need to watch out for burnout in, in remote employees because for many of us, there is no barrier between work and, and private life anymore. Especially when you have a small apartment and no separate home office, simply closing a door to your work is literally impossible. And so. There is a tendency to be always on for, amongst remote workers. And even if they are not constantly on their laptop, but, yeah, this physical barrier is just not there. And that keeps your mind more attached to, to the work or can, can do it. So that is something that you really need to watch out for. And especially for single team members, loneliness is, a topic. for many of us working colleagues have become an important part of social life. And if that happens mostly online, people can get lonely. Lars Nielsen (10:25.198) I wouldn't say that. I basically never feel lonely in that sense. But what you're describing is basically me during COVID. I live alone. I have my own apartment. I have a bit little bit bigger apartment so I can close my door to my bedroom and basically where I'm sitting now everybody can see it. It's actually also my training room so I have all my training equipment here. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:36.877) Hmm. Lars Nielsen (10:54.402) But it kind of describes how I had during COVID. And I can see that, like you're saying, like for single team members, it is very important that they have some kind of life outside of this. I've seen so many people, I do a lot of meetings with different kinds of people, online especially. And I see, like you're saying, like you see that they're actually sitting in the bedroom. You can see the bed behind them, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (11:10.05) Yeah, and also. Lars Nielsen (11:23.502) And I was like, okay. So you just roll out of your chair straight into your bed. You really need to have that separated somehow. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (11:36.634) Yes, that's the one thing. And also not just having a life outside of that, but also to make sure that the meetings that you do have, that they also infuse some sort of interpersonal things. And it's not just about efficiency and getting things done, but that it's also about connecting with each other. I think that is also crucial. Where do we get to that? A little bit later. Lars Nielsen (11:56.312) So. So from your experience, what are some of the most common mistakes leaders or companies make when they first transition to or actually try to manage virtual collaboration and view culture? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (12:10.466) and So the thing that I've seen the most is people trying to treat remote just the same way they do as they treat in office. So that they don't think about the things that we've already discussed, how the fusion of personal life and work life influences your employees. Then it's a lot about communication because if you do communicate the exact same way and we will dive into this later, as you would in an in-office situation that also poses threats and challenges. And what I've seen, especially in hybrid environments, if you treat remote employees differently than in-office employees, especially when it comes to promotions or raises, that can completely undermine your entire culture. Lars Nielsen (13:13.33) And we often hear about, I think it's called Zoom fatigue and the pressure of like a digital presented. I can't pronounce that word Paulina. What is that word? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:18.702) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:27.448) Presenteism. Lars Nielsen (13:30.35) I'm just going to put in like a marker there. So we often hear about, I think it's called Zoom fatigue and the pressure of digital presentism. How do these phenomenons reflect steeper missteps in adapting to virtual work culture? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:51.54) so for me, especially the digital presentism is usually a sign that you already had the presentism culture in place at to start with. Right. I mean, I've worked for it before employers where, I had to go into work every day, two hours back to say I was commuting. was two hour commute in the morning, two hour commute in the evening. and then I had a nine, nine hour office day. And on my commute, I also worked, but for everyone in the office, I was only present there for nine hours. And because it was a high scale startup, everyone was like, Paulina, Paulina just doesn't work enough. They, because they didn't see the four additional hours that I worked every hour, every day, because I just wasn't in the office. So if you have had this kind of culture before in terms of we. We very clearly notice how much time everyone is working. And you know me that usually also goes hand in hand with my big friend, micromanagement. Then that will show up in a remote culture as well. So that is usually an old problem that you just translate into a virtual age. And there is this beautiful saying that is, if you just digitalize a shitty process, you will have a digital digitalized shitty process. So you have to, if you, everything you switch from fully in office to a remote or hybrid setting, you will need to assess what is actually working in this kind of environment. You can't just do the exact same thing that he would do in office. And for me, for example, one crucial point, to that you need to avoid is make sure that you don't do hybrid meetings. Unless for town halls or like short updates, like the five minute meetings or so. But if you have longer meetings where you really want to come to a decision or a conclusion or sort of things out, that should either be fully remote, so everyone working on their laptops, or it should be fully in person. Because I mean, we all know the situations, right? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (16:19.518) Either you are the person who's transported into the big conference room and everyone is looking at the big screen and nobody can really see you and you can't really hear them and they get to work really closely together and you're like the odd one out. That is a really bad situation for the remote person joining this meeting in this way. Or everyone is sitting in the same meeting room. And they all have this, their separate laptops open and just staring at the, at the laptop and the camera and the laptop. And I'm like, sorry, now we have an in-person meeting and there is still no real human connection because we don't, we don't look each other in the eye. We don't interact with each other. only interact with our computers and our cameras. So either or is not a really good thing. So take that as one major part. Take, make sure that for. for bigger meetings, you do either or, not a mixed version. And since you specifically spoke about the Zoom fatigue, let me take you back to the pre-COVID times, right? As office workers, we always used to stare at a screen unless we were in a meeting, especially when we're in sales, right? We would see our clients in person, we would... talk to them face to face. And now basically, since all of these meetings also take place online, you don't do anything but staring at the camera and the screen all day long. So there is definitely a clear biological component because your eyes just get tired. And on top of that, when you're staring at screen, it is so much easier to get distracted, right? Lars Nielsen (18:15.447) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (18:15.634) Nobody fully gets if you're just making notes to the meeting or if you're actually on Amazon. And then you get the blinking of Slack and here teams and here Google alerts you to not a new email and it's and so on and so forth. that also adds into the zoom fatigue because you, your brain always has to process so much more information. than it would to, it would have in a, in a face to face situation. So a clear recommendation here, is keep those things in mind, come up with great ideas, how to infuse more life and personality in your meetings and make sure that, that you ensure that people deactivate their notifications and find ways to get them away from the screen. Like. For example, I don't know if you recall that, we used at Sovmed, we used to do coffee walks. So we would do our short check-in meetings on the phone or while we were out walking. So everyone was doing their own walk. But we were talking together, but nobody was looking at a screen. We were outside, we were in the sunlight, we were in the green. And I love that. You can do breathing exercises, especially in the morning together with your team, where you get people animated to get up, stand up, not just sit down. where you animate them to actually close their eyes. That's also by the way, way to creating trust with each other. If you get your team to close their eyes in front of each other, that is a huge trust builder, but don't force them to just, Lars Nielsen (20:11.232) And I would say for me, this is like just a low level thing, but just to kind of add on to what you're saying is we are doing this virtually. And for me, one thing that I've learned when we're doing these podcasts is I have to close down everything on my screen. I close, even though I put like no notifications, I still close all tabs on my computer. I close my Slack, I close my email, I close. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:31.458) Yes. Lars Nielsen (20:41.312) everything down. So basically on my screen here, I can see the scripts that we're using and I can see you and I on the screen and that's it. I have no distractions. I'm turning off my phone as well because I know myself like I have this popcorn brain. If I see my phone blink or I can see a Slack message over here on the screen, it will like get my attention right away. I like I'm the worst person as keeping Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:41.656) Amazing. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:51.105) Amazing. Lars Nielsen (21:11.01) focus on something for a long time. Just doing these podcasts is like a big learning for me. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:14.017) On it. But honestly, that is, I think that is not a you thing. I think that is a very common thing, that it's super, super easy to get distracted. And my pro tip, by the way, that I've been doing like since day three, after, after going on, on remote and zoom calls, et cetera, turn off your own picture for yourself in most of the apps. So Google meets zoom teams. You, there are, there are buttons that allow you to, still send your video to other comp- other, other people, but turn it off for yourself. Because that way we are all, we are all human beings. We all are a little bit vain. We all have a little bit of ego and it is a very human thing and all of us do it. I can assure you. And that has nothing to do if you think you're super pretty and amazing. It is a human thing. You will watch yourself. It is just what's happening. And as Zoom as you watch yourself, you're not fully there and you're not fully focused on the person you're talking to. And that obviously exacerbates the fact that I mentioned before that due to filters, et cetera, you don't necessarily see so much of the facial expressions and the gestures of the person you're talking to because you're just not even looking at them anymore. You're just looking at yourself. So that is my biggest tip to creating Lars Nielsen (22:39.755) Exactly. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (22:46.298) more human connection is disconnect from yourself. Don't treat your bloody camera as a mirror. It's not. Lars Nielsen (22:59.048) It is nuts. So, Kalina, on the flip side, what are some of the cornerstones, cornerstone best practices for building a cohesive and engaging virtual culture? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:11.768) Yeah. so for me, the most important thing is investing in face to face time. know this sounds counterintuitive, but it is the most important thing from my perspective to make sure that for the time that people don't see each other, they, actually have this real interpenetral connection that they can build on. So you can, for example, invest the money that you're saving and rent in organizing regular. In-person meetings, you can do this for specific teams or teams that collaborate with each other. You can do it for the full company at SolveMate. We met up with the full company once every quarter and for a week, like not just for a couple of, not just for one or two days, but for a full week so that we could really work together, collaborate together for some major time. And something that I would always do is take special care to make sure you bring together a team when you're onboarding new colleagues. So for example, in the first week when somebody's just started, make sure that the entire team meets in person for this first full week of the new colleague. Another thing that I can really strongly recommend is avoid meeting marathons. Make sure that meetings are used less frequently. really just for things where not, just for updates, but for things where you really need to make decisions or that you use specifically to a creative settings, new solutions or human interactions and make sure that you don't. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, stack them right behind each other. And lastly, and that closes the loop to the problems that a company basically moves from their in-office culture into a remote culture, make sure that you focus on outcomes over hours, because in a hybrid or fully remote environment, trust is your most important building block. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:31.434) It is always important, but especially in this kind of setting. If you keep micromanaging attendance because you don't trust that your people will actually be working when they are at home, you will disengage your people faster than you count to three. Lars Nielsen (25:49.246) And I have encountered that thing quite a lot when we're talking about working from home, because I like working from home and I'm so much more productive when I actually work from home than in an office. I actually think there are more distractions in the office than if I'm sitting at home. So I really prefer it. But every time... Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:56.866) Mm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (26:11.79) I'm from Maine. Lars Nielsen (26:15.006) Every time I've worked in a company where it's allowed to work from home, it always like over time comes down to people want you to come back to the office. And if you kind of just like poke them on why do you want that? It comes down to they say like, but I think people are more productive when they're sitting in the office. It's like, no, because everybody's chit chatting, you know. Everybody comes down, hey, Lars, how are you doing? Hey, you know, should we go get a coffee or hey, I have a question for you. And for me, sitting at home, no distractions, put some music in my ear and I just go. For me, it's so much easier. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (27:00.546) And that is, I mean, it's the same for me. I also get it then especially like, I mean, I know a lot of parents who love going into the office because they don't have the sick kids at home or, or anything. So it obviously very much depends on your personal situation as well. and for me, it's, it's always been good to have like a little bit of both. I love working remotely, but I also love those times where I infused with the energy of others. Lars Nielsen (27:12.711) Very good point. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (27:31.11) surely also very much depends on the kind of job you do. depends on if you're an introvert or an extrovert. So there is, there is a lot of, pros and cons for both, for both sides of it. But I fully agree. Usually if companies think that overall their people are more productive in the office, it usually is a trust issue. Lars Nielsen (28:03.146) Exactly. I'm just going to put in a marker here because we are running a little bit out of time and there's a lot to cover still. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:12.452) But then let's jump over to the next question maybe. Lars Nielsen (28:16.885) No, I was thinking about like what we could do from this point here is saying like, Hey Paulina, there's a lot to cover here. So there's going to be a two-part episode. And then we would just continue. If you can just in the document put in like, can you share a success story? This is where we have come to. And then we actually just continue that from there on next time. Is that okay with you? Cool. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:26.958) Okay, yep. Yeah, let's do that. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:42.508) Okay? Yeah, yeah. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:47.01) But shall we still record it from now? Lars Nielsen (28:49.464) Yeah, no, no, we're not recording it because we running out of time to record today. Cause I have to be ready at 10. I have a big meeting at 10. So I'll just cut it short now. And then we pick it up next time. course next time we have to do two episodes anyway, right? Okay, cool. Are you ready? Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:53.995) okay. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:57.912) Okay. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (29:01.838) Mm-hmm. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (29:08.94) Yep. Perfect. we also only need to prepare one more script. We also only need to prepare one more script for next week. Lars Nielsen (29:14.072) Sorry? Lars Nielsen (29:18.385) yeah, but preparing a script is only like 15 minutes, for me at least. I know it's longer for you. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (29:21.71) For you, was just about to say, for me, it's about an hour. Yes. Lars Nielsen (29:26.26) Okay. Okay. Are you ready? So Pauline, this topic about remote culture and so on, it's kind of like when we started talking about it, we wanted to do an episode. I think we actually figured out that this is going to be a two-part episode, At least maybe. Yeah. So we are going to cut it short for this episode, and then we are going to pick it up for next week and then just continue there. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (29:45.664) At least, yes. is such a huge topic. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (30:00.514) Yes, let's do that. Then it sounds like a good plan Lars. Lars Nielsen (30:04.622) Cool. So for everybody listening out there, tune in next week as well. When the second part of this one comes out, think Pauline is going to share a success story about like, how do you actually manage success with a remote culture instead of being suspicious and want everybody to come back into the office? So tune in next week. And as always. Remember to give a like, remember to share, remember to give us a five star rating on Apple Podcast. The algorithm loves it. Paulina, just share with the listeners where can they find you and how could they get hold of you if they have anything they don't want to share with you or even maybe talk to you about culture. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (30:54.776) Yes. So, obviously as always, we love if you guys reach out to us and share your personal stories that we will share it then in this podcast either in person. So you're always welcome to join as our next guest, or we can, just tell just, in quotation marks, tell your story, for you, if you want to stay anonymous. and you can always reach out to me either through LinkedIn. Lars and I will, we'll put up all the social media handles and all the links in the show notes. you can also find my company under culture code foundation.com. They can find what we're doing as a business. And you can find me on Instagram and you can find the podcast both on Spotify, Apple podcast, and YouTube. If you want to see our beautiful faces. Lars Nielsen (31:50.989) yeah, we are available everywhere. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (31:53.55) That's a misleading statement. Lars Nielsen (31:58.11) shit. Fuck, I'm gonna pull that back. I might delete that from the podcast. Let's see. Okay, thank you everybody for listening in and have a great and remember company culture is the basis and foundation of every great successful company out there. So keep it up and make sure that you contribute to a great company culture every single day. Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (32:03.414) you Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (32:24.606) Exactly. Thank you so much, Lars. And thank you to all of our listeners out there. We love to do this for you.