Building, Sustaining Emotional Culture in Digital Workplace

Jayant Kumar

Emotional culture of an organization refers to unspoken & less expressed part of feelings and sentiments of collective workforce which determines the vital outcomes like strive, creativity & agility. Organizational culture as an enabler & influencer of long term commercial success has been accepted and acknowledged for quite some time. Emotional side of the culture as an important element of organizational life has remained less discussed & debated as compared to strategy or execution or leadership.

However, recent studies on this facet have brought primacy to it wherein the influence of less spoken side appears to be profound. Earlier, emotions were seen as contrary to cognition, a disruption in the organizational processes – challenge to stable institutions. This view has given way to emotions & constructive harnessing of emotional energy being considered as an contributors to the success, growth & dynamic stability. Emotional culture represents the emotional ambience in an organisation and can be viewed as a subset of the overarching organisational culture. Depending on the affective events that take place in an organization, and how those events are interpreted and reacted to, the emotional culture of an organization can transpire to be healthy or toxic for its members.

In a changing world order where classic leadership model of hierarchy is giving way to leader’s ability to influence & be inclusive, impact of emotions & emotional competence has gained more significance for acceptability & success of leaders. Leader as a superhero to leader as an evolving, leading by thoughts and rallying people around is altering the power structures across all organizational context.  Emotional culture refers to the softer aspects of an organization and its difficult to be implanted and adapted through a command & control regime.

Conviction of leaders at different levels play an important role in carving out the emotional side of culture. Hence acknowledgement, acceptance & conviction to create an enabling culture which helps organizational objectives is basic step towards building of emotional culture. Leaders for various reasons, knowingly or otherwise display behaviors which manifest in creation of a toxic culture - and more often than not - are also treated as role models to emulate.

As shared belief & mental model of collective leadership play significant role in creating a strong emotional culture, dimensions & manifestation of the concept is contextual to business environment of each organization. Amongst all the competing priorities, it is one such aspect that builds long term stability & commitment. Hence investment of time & resources is critical to generative institution building process. A deeper understanding of the organizational context and leveraging relevant dimensions of emotional culture is key to commercial success. For an organization with customer trust as core to its offering & proposition, forming Trust as central element of internal culture is likely to be disproportionately rewarding both for employees and for customers as it will bring harmony & congruity.

An organization which has fiercely competitive market context would benefit by an exceedingly high order of internal collaboration & inter-dependence. Hence both similar & dissimilar pairs may be equally important in different context. A careful analysis & deeper understanding of the relevance of dimensions of emotional culture and weaving it into various systems & policies is important to create employee experience & elicit desired behavior. People within the organization respond to what they get in terms of experience. A system which is designed with trust being posed in its people is likely to get trust of people in return & vice-versa.

Similarly, organizations weaving fairness, openness or transparency as an important ingredient of culture with its people management systems will get reciprocal behavior from its people. The vice-versa is also true! There have been numerous experiments which has proved that like interpersonal reciprocal behavior, group behavior too is reciprocal instinctively and naturally respond to the cues & offerings.

Managers are the vehicles to create employee experiences within large corporates and give meaning to the policies & systems. The everyday behavior of the manager converts the text into actual experience for the individual when rubber hits the road. The well-meaning policy & system with best of intent creates desired impact only if the managers believes into it and lives the proviso in its true spirit while dealing with the individuals & the teams. Hence creating the capability & conviction of the frontline managers to participate into culture building process is an important link.

No employee arrives at the workplace with the intent to fail and to remain disconnected from his/her work. Every employee is consummated with an innate desire to find higher meaning into the work that (s)he does. The role of a manager is to enable the individual move up the value chain through contribution, learning & growth.

The form, features & meaning of work & culture is at cross roads yet again. Digital invasion at the workplaces is all pervasive. It started creeping in innocently and has gained momentum in no time. The massive impact is likely to be experienced across sectors & organizations sooner than anticipated. Low end transaction jobs are being replaced with bots & invisible software. Progressively higher order roles will also be occupied by neo digital workers & managers.

The 4th Industrial Revolution is bringing a fundamental change in various aspects of economic activities; production, consumption & transaction. It is propelled by the convergence of the physical world, the digital world and humans. The 4^th wave has very special characteristics as compared to its predecessors. It is redefining the concept of work & its virtues at basic level. While the economic opportunities & social disparity in most parts of the world are still widening, digital work models are likely to enhance redundancies of current skills and facilitate advent of new skills as also foster new opportunities.

So far the dimensions of emotional culture were limited to interactions and influence of men & women at the workplace. In the upcoming digital era, the intersections of men, women, humanoids & AI Hybrids will bring new set of challenges. These changes have already started creating a new form of anxiety & apprehension at individual level. The fear of unknown will have manifestation impacting employee health, wellness & capabilities. Anxiety as a cause of adverse health conditions has moved up several notches in urban white-collar work force. An organization which is emotionally connected well with fundamentals clearly defined, shared & accepted will be in a better position to deal with these transitions, obsolescence & challenges.

Organization cultures are infused with emotion and meaning for individuals as they provide them with psychological safety when coping with the uncertainties and anxieties of life. Organization culture is emotionally charged as people relish established cultural beliefs and practices, and often react emotionally when certain cultural norms are infringed. Culture fulfils a person’s emotional need for belonging and defines one’s purpose for existence. Thus, the commitment that individuals show in their allegiances to cultural tenets is more a result of emotional needs than a result of rational decision-making and hence have deeper impact & influence.

The writer is Chief-HR, TATA Power