How Do Organizations Maintain An Ethical And Supportive Culture Within Remote Working For IT Teams?

Discussions about remote working are in all organizations across the globe. It is not a new phenomenon, seeing that some organizations had already adopted it pre-covid, even though partially. Many companies were comfortable with the hybrid work model until covid showed up, and they had to move quickly to have all their employees working remotely.

Discussions about remote working are in all organizations across the globe. It is not a new phenomenon, seeing that some organizations had already adopted it pre-covid, even though partially. Many companies were comfortable with the hybrid work model until covid showed up, and they had to move quickly to have all their employees working remotely. That kind of shift makes getting everything right from the word go impossible. Some changes take time, such as creating and maintaining an ethical and supportive culture. They cannot happen overnight. While some companies are far up the ladder, many are still learning the ropes, and a good number dont know where to begin. Therefore, this post focuses on organizations that successfully maintain an ethical and supportive culture within their remote-working IT teams. How do they do it? 

What Are The Benefits of An Ethical Culture Within Remote Working It Teams?

Warren Buffet argues that culture, more than rule books, determines how an organization behaves. That’s how important culture is, and more so an ethical one. Regulators across the globe are increasingly encouraging organizations to reexamine their cultures. Many enterprises are perfect examples of organizations with formal systems communicating one thing and a culture promoting something different. Allowing these alignment gaps to persist leads to one type of failure or a combination – quality, safety, or ethics. 

The benefits of a strong ethical culture in a remote working environment are manifold. For the longest time, studies have revealed that companies with strong ethical cultures outshine those without, and there are more than enough reasons to explain these outcomes. Organizations with strong ethical cultures tend to have a committed and engaged workforce. Staff turnover tends to be lower, with consistently higher productivity. Investors and customers increasingly want to form partnerships with companies they believe engage ethically. 

Tips For Creating And Maintaining An Ethical Culture Within Remote Working It Teams

The management can implement a couple of strategies to create and maintain an ethical culture within remote working. 

  1. Providing secure technology guidelines 

Blending home and work can compromise the ethical obligation of the company to client privacy. Safeguarding the privacy of a company goes beyond offering securing technology. It must be accompanied by compliance when it comes to handling sensitive information that requires the provision of specific technology guidelines for utilization outside the brick-and-mortar office. For instance, some remote IT workers may not know that logging into their work email via a public server could compromise the company’s security. 

Specific technology guidelines may include instructions for generating a strong password, utilizing a VPN, and backing up data in the organization’s secure cloud storage. In a nutshell, the remote IT team should be made to understand the necessary measures they should take and why they are important to protect company data and information. 

  1. Training the employees on remote compliance 

Training is critical, especially when a company is experiencing a major shift that entails blending work and personal lives. Remote workers need the training to be aware of ethical signs in a virtual environment – including potential conflicts of interest, breach of proprietary information and confidential data, and potential data to company assets and property. Training should be provided to direct managers on how to respond if a remote IT worker approaches them with concerns surrounding compliance and ethics. Conversations of this nature can be more difficult if there is no way to have in-person meetings. By practicing active listening and communication skills, managers can adequately address ethical issues before they get out of hand. 

  1. Communicating evolving expectations 

Expectations and goals keep changing because the business environment is not static. The managers should therefore create and communicate policies specific to remote working to avoid misuse of enterprise time and resources. Pay attention to aspects such as working hours, how often the supervisors can have check-ins, extended breaks, and deadlines, among many other things. Managers must be thoughtful when formulating remote working policies and communicate the plan to the relevant workers. 

Even though ethical messages should cascade from the top, direct supervisors are usually the gatekeepers of ethics in organizations. Positive changes in ethical behaviors tend to increase when direct managers communicate with remote workers regularly. Managers are encouraged to utilize moral-coded words such as loyalty, respect, and accountability. Additionally, they should frequently reference core values to stress how they should be applied in a remote work environment. 

  1. Prioritizing ethical conversations for new remote hires

It’s quite admirable that the HR and compliance teams play a significant role in emphasizing ethical practices as an important of the onboarding process. However, that’s the beginning of the ethical journey and not the end. With alot of employee reshuffling and turnover happening, organizations have had to deal with new employees entering the remote work environment – that only increases the sense of isolation. The need for the direct supervisor to plan a one-on-one virtual meeting with the new hire to talk about the importance of how business gets done shows that everyone must promote an ethical culture within remote IT teams. Virtual exchanges of this nature are essential so that new remote workers and existing ones know who to talk to when faced with an ethical dilemma. When conversations about ethical business practices emanate from the corporate narrative, instead of compliance, they come off louder and more authentic to the remote IT workforce. 

  1. ‘What would you do’ regular sessions 

Does your organization ever expose remote IT employees to ‘what would you do’ virtual sessions? Supervisors should consider organizing and hosting regular structured conversations about possible ethical challenges employees might face in their daily routines. Such conversations help remote workers understand areas they can cut corners or compromise. By discussing challenges routinely, team members can brainstorm hypothetical reactions and responses, increasing their chances of acting on their values by exploring risk scenarios and real-world temptations. 

The ‘what would you do’ sessions foster a sense of comradeship, leading to increased truthfulness and knowing fellow employees outside the immediate teams. When remote employees build strong bonds and connections with one another, it reduces their likelihood of engaging in activities that might breach that trust or harm the organization. That also leads to reduced better client engagement and increased profitability. 

  1. Utilize frequent feedback and technology to pinpoint possible trouble. 

In a remote work setting, leaders require frequent and dependable feedback to detect early signs of concern. Managers can deploy effective feedback-gathering mechanisms such as mini-pulse surveys or real-time feedback apps to complement global surveys through the timely provision of data points on the feelings of employees and existing struggles with ethical decision-making. 

Gathering intelligence on where remote workers might require greater ethical support and where there might be a need to institute mentorship programs allows an organization a powerful barrier for protecting the ethical fabric the company has worked so hard to build. 

Maintaining strong ethics and integrity in an environment where team members are emotionally and physically disconnected is difficult. It’s no mean feat. Bringing ethical discussions to the forefront, regularly talking about potentially challenging situations, and ensuring smart utilization of data to monitor worrisome trends can help in real-time adaptation and facilitate creating and maintaining a culture where remote employees want to and will do everything right. 

A strong work ethic among remote teams promotes teamwork and cooperation, fosters a positive public image, protects company assets,  and also provides emotional security.

  1. Communication and Collaboration 

One of the challenges that companies with remote workers contend with is preventing communication and collaboration loss. Concise, clear, and respectful communication is the heart and soul of any organizational culture. It can make or break a remote IT workplace. Remote working denies employees the pleasure of walking into a colleague’s cubicle or catching up over coffee. As such, it’s easy for team members to lose visibility into ongoing projects.  If care is not taken, efficiency, trust, and collaboration can erode. 

The solution lies in ensuring consistent and proactive communication between IT teams. When working remotely, workers must communicate early and often about their availability, project progress updates, and deadlines to their teammates, which shows they are reliable. If all team members learn to communicate effectively, information will flow freely, issues will be addressed accordingly and on time, and collaboration will flourish. 

To encourage as much interactions as those that happen in physical offices, remote IT workers can leverage video and phone calls to nurture connections.  Leaders can plan weekly check-ins with their team members and regular one-on-one meetings to touch base with team members directly. It doesn’t have to be about work. Even free conversations would help remote employees connect at a personal level, reducing possible unethical behaviors. When remote IT professionals are free with each other, they can ask for help when facing ethical dilemmas and hopefully see things from a new perspective which informs how they respond to the situation without compromising the organization’s ethics guidelines. 

A Supportive Culture Within Remote Working IT Teams 

On the other hand, a supportive culture offers psychological and social conditions that optimize the employees’ safety, health, and general well-being. It could range from supporting their growth to deliberately constructing positive relationships between people, their jobs, and the organization. Like an ethical culture, a supportive culture encourages employees to be more empowered, engaged, and give their best in their job, enhancing product quality, service delivery, and overall impressive organizational performance. 

A supportive culture is a breathing, living and dynamic space. A supportive culture creates a working atmosphere where responsibilities, ideas, respect, and mutual support thrive and flow between employees, leaders, suppliers, clients, and other stakeholders. It is a space that carefully nurtures trust and loyalty. All supportive corporate cultures are built on the foundation of purpose – a common understanding of the organization’s mission, values, and mission. The purpose is where the company is headed, and the corporate culture provides a roadmap. 

Tips For Creating and maintaining A Supportive Culture

A supportive culture in a remote setting begins with supportive supervisors. Its usually influenced by managerial styles that vary in levels of fairness, communication, and support. Supervisors who offer support and guidance to their employees create a culture where workers feel sufficiently equipped and motivated to accomplish tasks. Leadership styles that value feedback and employees’ ideas increase engagement by empowering workers to discuss workplace policies and practices capable of improving the remote workplace culture. 

Gathering and applying employee feedback should be a treasured practice at the supervisory and remote workplace culture levels. Organizations create feedback cultures by giving the staff opportunities to provide anonymous feedback about the work, supervisors, colleagues, changes they would want to be implemented, workload evaluation, mental health, stress, and burnout. A good way for the management to demonstrate that they value employee feedback is to report assessment outcomes transparently and develop and implement a plan for enhancing the remote workplace in response to the feedback members of remote teams give. 

Other effective tips for building and maintaining a supportive culture for remote teams include

  1. Prioritizing psychological safety and trust 

A supportive culture empowers remote IT professionals to deliver their best work. Leaders provide direct reports about how they want jobs done. They ensure the availability of information, tools, accessibility, and proper guidance without micromanaging remote IT employees. As simple as it sounds theoretical, implementing it isn’t a walk in the park explaining why micromanagement is still a common practice, with 59% of employees confirming to have worked for a micromanager at some point in their working life. 

A good way of showing remote IT workers that you trust them is by offering flexibility and allowing them to choose when to get the work done. In other words, when dealing with remote employees, managers must be willing to adopt a results-based culture that emphasizes achievements instead of the hours worked. For many employees, the biggest unlock is the liberty to work when they feel they are the most productive. 

Besides trusting remote employees to create work schedules, organizations should also focus on ensuring psychological safety. Psychological safety is ensured when the manager of a remote IT team creates a space where the members feel comfortable contributing ideas, sharing and receiving feedback, and asking questions – all the while not fearing being themselves. Psychological safety means employees know it’s okay or safe to fail at work. The best team leaders create space for mistakes and genuinely back their teams when they make mistakes, allowing them to recover from them and grow. A manager can achieve this by;

  • Celebrating failures and learning experiences publicly instead of only accomplishments and wins, which shows there is nothing to be ashamed of. 
  • Resisting the urge to pick ideas apart during brainstorming sessions and reserving that activity as creative time for unusual ideas. 
  • Sticking up for the remote team if another department, leader, or colleague points the finger at a perceived failure. 
  1. Allowing hard conversations 

A manager should encourage remote team members to be vocal and speak up when they aren’t okay, thus requiring a colleague to step up and help – or at the very least adjust priorities. If your organization has gotten to this point, you all need a pat on your back. It is a sign of a strong supportive workplace culture. Achieving this level of vulnerability and transparency among remote IT workers makes them perform better since they feel their managers and, generally, the organization supports their emotional well-being. There is a challenge, though. A research study revealed that 67% of managers are uncomfortable having hard conversations with their employees. A more comfortable way of approaching this is utilizing numbers instead of emotions. It makes the conversations more comfortable and approachable. For instance, instead of asking an employee how they are feeling today, you may approach it this way; on a scale of 0-10, with zero being not great and ten being amazing, how would you rate yourself? What can the organization do to make your score better? And so on. 

  1. Encourage remote IT workers to take time off – and respect it.

Many remote workers dont take leave because they are afraid of how their inboxes will look when they return to work. A good manager talks to the remote teams about various leave options and how the organization can support them to take them because employees need some time off to recharge. 

Depending on the nature of your work, the supervisor may even institute a new type of leave to address the various unique needs of the team. For instance, Happiness Concierge created a Health and Wellness leave where employees take two days off every quarter to engage in activities that bring them joy. Further, once a remote employee takes a leave, colleagues and managers must respect their decision and resist the urge to bombard them with emails or pings. In fact, it’s better if an employee on leave or a day off isn’t contacted at all. It shows respect for boundaries. 

  1. Supply tangible resources 

Alot of things that goes into building a supportive culture is intangible and unquantifiable. However, there is much more that organizations can do to demonstrate their investment in supporting employees. A perfect example is the creation of ERGs committed to generating all types of experiences. While at it, employers must be willing to do more than creating employee resource groups and actively support them. Increased support for ERGs could mean offering enough budget, obtaining leadership buy-in, listening to requests and feedback from these groups, and encouraging employee participation. 

Another tangible contribution by the management is ensuring access to mental health resources. A company-paid subscription to a meditation app goes a long way, but an employer committed to the mental well-being of employees could do more. Firstly, they can include mental health benefits in employee health insurance. Secondly, the organization can organize mental health and burnout training programs for managers and leaders. And thirdly,  companies can provide mental health days or allow dedicated time off for employees to cater to their mental health needs. 

  1. Actualizing strategies 

Among the most effective ways of creating a supportive culture is talking directly to the remote IT team. Find out what they feel is lacking, what they need, and what would make them feel highly supported at work. While having this information is a crucial step, what you do with the information is what matters the most. It’s imperative that the organization’s management follows through on employee feedback. If the furthest the management goes is collecting information, the employees will not feel supported. Follow-ups are critical to creating a supportive culture when working with remote teams and when handling office-based workers. 

Bottom Line 

Remote working setups will only grow in organizations across all industries. While some industries cannot fully transition to remote working – especially the manufacturing industries – the number of people working remotely will only increase in the coming years. Therefore, companies must align their activities and employees accordingly to facilitate a conducive environment for business continuity and growth. One of the organizational components that are affected by remote working is the culture. More than ever, companies must pursue ethical and supportive culture lest they fail miserably in their attempts for successful remote working or hybrid working setups. An ethical culture ensures that employees behave ethically, especially when communicating with one another and with key stakeholders. By having specific ethic guidelines, enforcing them, and explaining their importance to the employees, an organization can cultivate an ethical culture for its remote IT professionals. A supportive culture is equally important because remote workers must be sufficiently empowered to handle tasks without physical supervision. A supportive culture also provides remote IT teams with enough mental and emotional support, which helps them to engage better with their jobs leading to increased productivity and low staff turnover. 

References 

  1. https://www.ethicalsystems.org/remote-work/#:~:text=Trust%20%26%20Loyalty,of%20ethical%20remote%2Dwork%20management.
  2. https://magazine.ethisphere.com/culture-matters/
  3. https://www.wellnessnb.ca/workplace/workplace-wellness-comprehensive-approach/supportive-organizational-culture/#:~:text=A%20supportive%20organizational%20culture%20provides,their%20work%2C%20and%20their%20organization.
  4. https://www.brucemayhewconsulting.com/blog/the-importance-of-building-a-supportive-company-culture
  5. https://mhanational.org/how-can-we-create-supportive-workplace-culture
  6. https://blog.trello.com/supportive-company-culture
  7. https://www.hrci.org/community/blogs-and-announcements/hr-leads-business-blog/hr-leads-business/2022/02/14/3-ways-to-create-a-culture-of-ethics-remotely
  8. https://www.fastcompany.com/90789243/3-strategies-for-maintaining-an-ethical-culture-in-a-remote-or-hybrid-workplace
  9. https://www.teamly.com/blog/supportive-company-culture/
  10. https://blog.trello.com/supportive-company-culture
  11. https://prsay.prsa.org/2020/10/05/5-challenges-of-working-remotely-and-how-to-solve-them/
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