You spend years cultivating your company culture – getting your employer value proposition right, hiring the best employees, creating an environment of trust, community and innovation.
Then Covid comes along and makes you question everything you thought you knew about your business.
Salesforce consultancies and end-user organisations have gone through an enormous change this year; businesses have changed in ways they had not thought possible.
While Covid-19 has forced companies to re-evaluate and react to the new normal world – what short and long-term effects are these changes realistically going to have on your culture?
If the dust is now settling within your business, now might be the time to look at ways to reclaim and refocus your company culture – here is how.
Remote Working and Company Culture
The most significant change that has happened in most companies which is a threat to company culture is the onset of remote working.
The flexibility of Salesforce roles has been highly beneficial throughout the pandemic, and Marc Benioff was one of the first business leaders to announce remote working for all employees until next year.
Before the pandemic, remote working has been explored to a degree, but the numbers of people now working from home have the potential to affect company culture negatively.
When remote working is the norm, the bonds between colleagues can break down.
Ensure that you integrate ‘office’ policies for remote workers in the same way you do for office-based employees. This includes-
- Working hours
- Code of conduct
- Contactability
- Meeting times
- Social workplace engagements
Company culture is more than just Friday drinks, but if your team who were once office-based are now miles apart, it is a good idea to try and keep the camaraderie of the office alive. This means that not every Zoom call should be purely about work, and make use of social media and messaging apps to keep in casual contact with your remote employees.
Additionally, if your team are now working home and this is going to be a permanent fixture – what contribution can you make to ensure their WFH set-up is as easy to work from as the office.
Are you contributing to their internet connection? Their hardware? Ther electricity or heating bills? In the UK, there are conditions when an employer must make contributions to remote employees – a once little known law which is now incredibly relevant. Currently, employers can pay employees up to £6 weekly to contribute to household bills – you can read the rest of the guidelines, including health and safety surrounding remote employees on the government website here.
Making sure your Salesforce team feel as though they have been given enough help with their move to remote working will help create a positive company culture – albeit in a different setting.
Extra Workloads
For many Salesforce consultancies and end-users, the pandemic has been a prosperous time. Except for a few industries, Adobe recently published figures showing that online retail has seen unprecedented growth – worldwide e-commerce sales are up 55% year on year, resulting in a $434.5 billion increase in online spending.
Has extra work resulted in a strain on employees?
Salesforce’s ethos is all about putting the customer first and using innovation to deliver this goal. This results-driven environment is what makes Salesforce one of the most successful and innovative places to work; it also means plenty of hard work.
The pandemic has been a challenging time for everyone, do not underestimate the potential difficulties that some team members will be experiencing working from home with added workloads.
Despite the pandemic, Salesforce’s growth has continued. Revenue increased from $8.4 billion to $13.3 billion last year and is expected to hit $22.4 billion by 2022.
For many Salesforce teams, growth will be a part of their strategy this year, and this is something which leaders need to be mindful of in terms of company culture.
How do you plan to integrate remote employees? A robust remote onboarding plan is necessary to strengthen, not splinter a growing remote team.
Revisiting Your Purpose and Values
Your company culture is guided by your businesses entire purpose and values
Right now, it is key to have ‘why’ at the heart of everything you do.
Business leaders should consider how their purpose and values have translated to the new normal – you may need to reiterate or alter the way your consultancy or business thinks about itself.
Think about –
- What are the main differences in your business between now and before the pandemic?
- What changes have occurred to the daily schedule of your employees?
- Have your products or services changed, and if so, how?
- Have you lost or gained team members?
Being agile as a leader is critical right now. Despite being in the ‘recovery’ stage of post-Covid, the pandemic has alerted business leaders to the need to be flexible and accommodating to their team – being able to achieve this will strengthen your company culture in an increasingly changeable world.
Final Thoughts
The way you react to recent changes in your organisation will say a lot about you as an employer.
Being aware of the need to create and maintain company culture for our ‘new normal’ is a must right now in your Salesforce consultancy.
If your Salesforce team requires new talent to help with extra workloads, or if it appears you have a skills gap in your team, working with a dedicated Salesforce recruiter to hire your next team members is an excellent way to protect your company culture.
Click here to contact us and discover how we can help you build your Salesforce team with the right employees for your business goal and your culture.
Thanks,
Lee
About Resource On Demand
Resource On Demand is Europe’s first specialist Salesforce Recruitment Company, now also focusing on growth Cloud markets.
We assist innovative and disruptive organisations to grow their technology teams. We are supporting companies to fill Cloud roles that span across Digital Marketing, Marketing Automation, Human Capital Management and the growing Salesforce.com suite of skills.
The team at Resource On Demand have access to an extensive database of key talent, registering over 8000 Cloud professionals each year.
To find out how we can support you call us on 01322 272 532, or you can contact us by clicking here.