Julia Vastrik: How to strengthen company culture in the WFH era

We’re in the age of remote and hybrid working, and our physical distance from one another is having a huge impact on company culture. 

Previously, grabbing lunch or a drink after work was easy. But now, even small talk needs to be consciously brought into our scheduled Slack calls to avoid things becoming too transactional. 

This new way of working can lead to serious challenges like feeling disconnected from colleagues and the company mission, lacking motivation, and experiencing loneliness. 

So what’s the way forward?

In this episode, we speak with Julia Vastrik, an agile coach and team facilitator, about how we can strengthen company culture in a remote/hybrid workplace.

Julia offers loads of great advice, which we’ve summarized for easy reference:

Building Trust and Relationships

We’re a much more effective team when we like the people we work with. 

• Get to know people through small talk
• Use ice breakers, team rituals
• Virtual lunches, coffees
• Encourage silliness for personalities to shine
• Learning together e.g. book clubs, communities around certain topics like AI
• For big meetings, use breakout rooms
• Organize face-to-face activities - both for work and fun

Communication

A lot of information is lost in written communication. 

• Use a good balance of synchronous and asynchronous communication
• Have explicit agreements on communication and how to run meetings
• With written communication, the giver needs to be overly friendly (emojis, kind greetings), the receiver overly accepting that they may perceive the tone wrong
• Use audio and video to prevent misinterpretation

Productivity and Collaboration

• Set clear goals for teams and individuals
• Create working agreements e.g. working hours, punctuality, documentation, ways of working, etc
• Co-create - brainstorm solutions and make decisions together to boost a feeling of belonging

Continuous Improvement

Little changes sum up to bigger improvements over time. 

• Retrospectives, post-mortems & team discussions
• Experiment
• We’re never in an ideal state - there’s always room for improvement

Psychological Safety

Feeling safe to be not perfect, to make mistakes, to be a human.

• Mistakes happen and they are a learning opportunity
• Have leaders model this behavior

Other Resources:

The book Julia recommends to read is called The Culture Map, by Erin Meyer.

The virtual ‘body doubling’ clubs Harv mentioned are flow.club and flown.com.

Follow Julia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-vastrik/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

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