As an organisation, BTA has been talking about the Great Resignation for quite some time and while this is an accurate description of what’s been happening, it still only describes the symptom, not the cause.

Culture is vital to retain staff, yet charities, in fact all organisations, face a post-pandemic culture crisis.

Charities are currently having to redefine their culture to keep staff.   One of the main ways they are doing so is with the offer of remote or hybrid working. A move that has provided many people with more autonomy over their work, greater flexibility, and a better work–life balance. However, is this move costing organisations their culture?

Although invisible, culture works through human interactions. Therefore, to cope with this post-pandemic culture crisis, shouldn’t we be fostering supportive social ties within our organisations rather than giving this up for the convenience that remote/ hybrid working can offer?   

Organisational culture is a combination of written and unwritten rules, norms, beliefs, behaviours and values. It is how work gets done, how people interact with each other and how they see their organisations place in the world.

Strong workplace relationships matter for many reasons. Employees are emotional beings who crave satisfaction in their work and seek connections to their colleagues and a purpose in their work.  A survey conducted by The Work Trend Index highlighted that strong workplace networks are critical to productivity and innovation.  

With the move to remote working, it is undeniable that charity culture has eroded workplace relationships. People consistently report feeling disconnected and a study conducted by Harvard Business Review found that the shift to remote work shrunk both close and distant employee networks.   

The office, on the other hand, has always acted as a social anchor providing employees with a place to interact and collaborate. Without this social anchor, employees are losing their sense of workplace belonging, and organisations face becoming a fragmented collection of individuals connected by a charity name.

Remote working can also create psychological distance between employees and the charities they work for, whether that be making staff less confident to ask questions, seek guidance, or request help. In the office, however, managers can more easily spot the visual cues for when an employee needs extra support. The 70-20-10 Model for Learning and Development proposes that 70% of learning happens through experience, 20% comes from observing colleagues and only 10% is down to formal training so whilst webinars have been a great learning tool that comes with many benefits, they cannot replace the learning gained through social interaction and experience.

Charity culture is established and transmitted through the messages and visible actions of management, through explanations given to crucial organisational decisions, and through reactions to visible incidents. The inability of staff to be present at these important learning moments means that employees aren’t learning and internalising the ways companies do things.

How work gets done has also changed with this shift. According to the Work Trend Index, Workers aged 18 to 25 reported more difficulties feeling engaged or excited about work, getting a word in during meetings, and bringing new ideas to the table when working remotely. Whilst new staff are finding it hard to find their footing since they do not experience the onboarding, networking, and training that they might get when working in the office. These employees say their relationships with their direct teams and access to leadership are worse than those who have been with the company longer.

Therefore, to ensure that our workplaces remain engaged, innovative, and inclusive, we should stop altering charity culture to fit with the realities of remote working and instead redefine culture by focusing our attention on fostering supportive social ties through in-person interactions and not denying the integral part the office can play in restoring culture.