It was reported last week that Lloyds Banks has told most of its 65,000 staff that they will not return to work for at least another five months, joining the likes of Barclays and Natwest in doing so. Quite apart from the economic effects of FTSE 100s banishing their staff from the workplace, many companies are having seriously to rethink the way in which they communicate with their staff. This year has seen revolutionary change in working patterns and practices of a kind unprecedented in the entire post-War era: daily face-to-face meetings and ‘water cooler’ chats can no longer be relied upon to ensure teams feel engaged and connected. This has been reinforced by the second lockdown starting in England today.

Against this backdrop, many leaders are fretting about how their businesses’ culture and productivity are being affected as employees leave the office and go remote, and about the impact that this is having on how their customer bases are being served. As Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England, expressed cogently in a speech last month, the ‘“working relationships, like any relationship, need to be fed and watered. Remote working inhibits our ability to cultivate and grow these working relationships”. With around a fifth of businesses apparently saying they intend to use home-working as a permanent business model, companies with remote workers will need to be more creative about the way they keep their team spirit going and maintain their corporate ethos outside the office, whilst also optimising productivity among the workforce.

Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams have become a key feature of the lexicon of business in 2020 and they are platforms that have undoubtedly proved valuable enablers to help keep employees connected and allow businesses to operate more or less undisrupted during lockdown. But there is plenty of talk as well of video call fatigue, due to the deluge of meetings held online and the need to curate a continuous sense of viewer engagement with a soulless, flickering PC screen. Businesses will need a more imaginative set of digital tools and an effective and considered remote strategy, to ensure their cultures extend beyond the office walls, and strong working relationships and workplace creativity are not victims of the change.

Good communication is essential for team culture, and the daily chatter of the office needs to be substituted with strong internal communications for those businesses where employees are working remotely. Leadership needs to set the tempo and tone, and C-suite leaders will need to make sure they keep time in their diaries to check in with colleagues, perhaps by holding virtual open office hours on a weekly basis. Bosses will need to update their employees virtually in a more structured way than may have been done in the past, possibly through the creation of new channels and platforms that can contain up to date information and news.

As well as keeping people informed about company strategy, internal communications also need to focus on the more ‘human’ aspect of office life. There are many for whom being unable to set foot in a lively office setting for months will be difficult from a mental health perspective. As social beings, remote working obviates our ability to cultivate strong working relationships, and companies need to consider ways in which to find imaginative ways of engendering virtual office camaraderie. They may consider holding virtual events based around the values and vision of the business that help employees feel engaged, and part of a bigger organisation. We’ve come across a client that holds regular virtual yoga sessions at the start of the working day, for example.

There are obviously numerous possibilities for adjusting the way in which businesses and organisations communicate with colleagues and build strong and resilient workplace communities. It is clear, though, that businesses with remote workers will need to think carefully about how they maintain their corporate culture, and perhaps those companies that can manage the change most effectively and creatively will be the ones best placed to succeed in a post-Covid world.

Time will tell, though, exactly what the impact on employees’ productivity and workplace happiness will look like. As Andy Haldane said, this period has re-shaped working lives, and “whether this change is for the better is one of the key questions of our time”.