Essay
Office Culture in the 21st century.
A Boring Essay
Before you read any further, this is what I submitted for my University assignment, it’s not interesting, and I’m 99% sure you won’t read till the end.
We’re two decades into the 21st century, and the way we do work has changed substantially from previous centuries. In the past, limited technology meant that what we did was more directly linked into a daily wage concept of work. What you made or did in a day determined your wage in a direct way.
Manufacturing, agriculture, and the office commute were the primary job market during those times.
But no more.
Changes in technology, a shift in the culture, and financial challenges, have shifted both the kind of work we do and the way we do it.
Workplace culture has seen some significant changes in recent years, especially during the pandemic. Corporate culture is changed forever, maybe for the good. The hybrid model which is much in the news is debated around the globe for its efficiency and productivity with full-time work from home and full-time office hours.
Organizations around the globe are evolving all the time and the culture of many businesses has seen a paradigm shift with more flexibility in working staff, flexible working hours, and less formal attire.
Office policy plays a vital role to inculcate the office culture. The rise of big tech companies which promote free speech, flat hierarchy among employees, out-of-the-box perks, and various health benefits to its employees, has set high standards for others to catch up.
Surely, a big in this is played by rapidly advancing technology, from just emails in the 90s to Zoom calls, Skype, and FaceTime meetings on the fly, we have a long way. These technological advancements were enhanced by the pandemic where there was no other option but to work from home. Need propels innovation, and this pandemic proved that.
To add to this, the concept of employee wellness, which was not considered a success metric, is largely being considered now all around the world, from setting up Yoga classes inside offices to Meditation hours, sick leave is more flexible nowadays, free healthcare facilities up to a certain limit for all employees. This shift in culture that treats the workforce in a dignified way has surely made its mark in the 21st-century work culture.
Companies are listening to the day-to-day demands of their people and are flexible to offer work-from-home options as per their needs. The idea is to create a work-life balance that benefits employees as well as a company’s core values.
The internet clearly has a large impact on culture as people share their thoughts and experiences. Songs, videos, articles and images can become viral, thus entering mainstream culture. In this way, a single culture can be shared by a wide range of participants. Moreover, many companies have started to use social media marketing, content creation and meme marketing to lure youth. This is not a harmful practise but shows the flexibility of some companies to ride the wave of social media popularity.
Employees are more reliant than ever on technology now. Their trust in new technology to aid and help with work has increased in the remote environment. The pandemic has forced them to try new ways of working, it is a good time to add technology that can free up their time.
The kinds of repetitive tasks that may drain the time and energy of remote workers are the prime targets for automation. By being freed from this task, employees have more time for creativity, solving new problems, innovating, and thus building company culture.
Many companies, especially tech companies, had some experience with remote work before the pandemic. However, it was never to an extent that we see now due to this pandemic and now that same culture that was present during physical office hours needs to be translated to the remote experience as well.
Things are different now. Not only has remote work become the default way of operating, but it also looks like it is here to stay.
Remote work culture is organizational culture, and that culture hasn’t settled yet. This is a good thing. Companies have the chance to create new reforms and values that fit the future.
The main cultural challenge for remote work is how to replicate the easy interactions that happened in the physical setting of the office.
Interactions are important in creating culture. Through interactions, employees sort out which beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are part of the group’s norms and try to adapt to them thereby contributing to culture building.
If we talk about 21st-century leadership, Strong leadership is nothing like 20th-century leadership. In fact, if you look at both kinds of leadership more closely, you will notice that strong leadership in the 21st century is almost the exact opposite of the previous generation’s style that we encountered.
The focus of today’s leadership is to build relationships with employees and customers and serve others, a complete departure from that of the 20th century, which focused on tasks, deadlines, and orders that had a strict end-to-end policy plan of implementation that had to be followed. Some of these value principles still exist in some legacy companies like financial banks, pharma, and automobile sectors but they are getting a tough competition from 21st-century startup ideology that promotes free and innovative spaces for it workforce to work in, hence resulting in more variety of ideas and better team coordination.
The concepts of what work is, has changed.
What we think work is, both in culture and how it fits into our lives, has changed in the 21st century. Entrepreneurship, including MSME’s, has lead the way, with 21st century workers wanting to work for themselves instead of for someone else. Nearly every 2 of 3 corporate worker will have an idea of starting his own venture now or in the near future. This radical shift in the mindset is relatively new and speaks about how rapidly things have shaped. If employees with this mindset work in a environment that is equally rewarding and has a lot of growth opportunity, we are likely to see mini startups taking shapes inside the company and finally getting green signal from high level executives to integrate with the primary offering of the company. This wasn’t possible to the extent it is possible these days. This shift in the mindset must be appreciated and adopted by companies who call themselves leading ventures in a space.
This drive towards entrepreneurship and making a success of a business plays into the steady increase in more hours per week being dedicated to work.
But here’s a catch to it.
Workers aren’t in it for the long haul.
Despite the shift in the kinds of jobs that are now available, not everyone is ready for this 21st century workforce. There is a disconnect between the jobs that are in demand and the training that is available to them.
Gone are the days of the worker who dedicates 40 years to one company, to then retire. The 21st century is the era of the pivot, and the pursuit of doing what you love, more famously “follow your heart philosophy”. Workers are creating careers that look a bit like a meal, sticking with a job from two to five years on average before changing jobs. Workers today are constantly thinking about the next move, as their career is about what they make of it. It’s up to them, not a single company, to build their career.
This is a challenge. 21st century workers are still being trained with a 20th century model on a 19th century white-board.
More recently in India there was a famous reality TV show called Shark Tank India, that seriously changed the view of Indian parents towards entrepreneurship. This would impact the mindset with which employees work in a company, wether in India or overseas, startups are glorified by the media and startup culture as a high risk high reward entity. I cannot comment if this mentality is healthy for an organisation or not but for sure, we are in for a big change in the way Indian companies carry out business and day to day activities.
However, this does not mean that a shared global culture has been created. Geographical boundaries have been removed as communication opportunities connect more people than ever before but that does not mean that the popular culture of the internet is embraced by everyone. There are other limits to the spread of culture, such as language barriers and loyalty to another culture. Moreover, there are locations where internet access is limited and so the spread of popular culture is hindered and so likely changes will take affect with time, won’t be a rapid one.
END.
I hope you got clarity out of this article. I have taken feedback of my valuable critics in improving this article. I love and thank them all.
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Till then stay alive.
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