Using hybrid work to create a strong culture

Organisations are being intentional with their hybrid work plan to ensure the culture is strong at home and in the office. 

Anthony Woodward, CEO of Logicalis Australia discussed how his organisation has embraced hybrid work over the past few years. 

Woodward joined Logicalis during the lockdown and five months into his tenure he met his first staff member in person.

During the pandemic, he noticed how people adapted to working from home during the lockdowns. 

He said, “Some people took to it, and that was fine. Some craved that interaction with each other.

“As I've been working through building the senior leadership team capability, we are more leaning towards wanting to get together in person when we can.”

Woodward said having new people start over the lockdown period was an issue as they couldn’t develop a strong affinity with the brand.

“Those people have not had the benefit of being near somebody, they could just walk up to and ask about something. The problem with that we found was it meant people didn't have that strong affinity with the organisation,” he said.

“If somebody happened to tap them on the shoulder to go somewhere else they'd have less resistance to leaving because they hadn't built that sort of cultural connection. They hadn't built up their network of friends and peers.”

Woodward said, “It is vital from our perspective, as we bring in new people to both the industry, to our organisation.

“And perhaps earlier in their career development cycle that they can get the benefit of tapping into the experience and the supportive mentoring that they can get from some of the more longest standing employees who are a bit more experienced in things.”

Technology aspect

Woodward said they were lucky enough to be set up with technology to let their staff work from home. 

He said the core locations in Australia are quite well equipped for supporting Teams meetings, WebEx and Zoom, for example.

“What we found, as we came back to the office after the longer lockdown was, we needed to refresh some of that technology to keep up with where things have moved to,” he explained.

“For a little while, we had an issue where some people were complaining that having trekked all the way to the office the tech was less than what they could access in their own home office that they'd probably set up more recently than that.”

He added, “We took some steps to upgrade what we had in the office environment. That's still ongoing, but we're in a pretty good place now.

“It was about getting it up to the current level of what folks are expecting from their own home environment.”