Maintaining company culture during a global pandemic

Workplace culture is the shared values, beliefs, and attitudes of people in a workplace. The question is, how do you maintain company culture during a global pandemic, when a survey by WKspace found that a quarter of the UK Workforce have been furloughed, and 49% who are working, are working from home?

Culture at Peldon Rose

Our culture has developed from our 35-year heritage, focuses on our people building success and building honest relationships with our industry partners and clients. 31% of the workforce have been with the business for over 10 years, including our CEO Jitesh Patel and COO Alan Jamieson, a testament to who we stand for today.

A third of the business are creative and technical designers, putting design at the forefront of what we do and with clients we truly aspire to work with, creating spaces where business culture can thrive. We love what we do, and the people we work with.

Sterling House is our home, we have been based here for over 20 years, and last year went through the full workplace consultancy to design and build our brand-new office. With activity-based-working and culture at the heart of a plan, we have a space the entire team are proud of.

A dining room table we gather around for lunch, the kitchen is the heart of the building and we enjoy fun that is both business lead and grass routes initiatives. It’s our culture that makes Peldon Rose one of the best companies to work for and keeps us all happy, comfortable and able to be our best selves.

How has Covid-19 impacted culture?

It's reassuring to hear from the same survey 91% of people saying the workplace is still required across a variety of sectors including financial, legal, insurance and government bodies.

53% of employers and 43% of employees feel culture has been negatively impacted, as business we explored how we’ve maintained as much ‘norm’ as possible, and incubating our culture.

Communications starts within

Like the majority of the UK, the majority of our workforce transitioned to home-based working, and it was imperative we set up a clear and consistent communications channel to update our homebased and site teams on important business updates.

We continued with our weekly All Hands, led by CEO Jitesh Patel, mapping out clear priorities for the week, supported by a daily email update to motivate the business and provide clarity on business direction and all relevant Covid-19 updates.

We then launched a new daily internal email set up by the marketing team, with the objective to maintain Peldon Rose culture, share business wide comms and also inspire people for business and fun activities during a challenging time – we average at over 60% open rates, and lots of positive feedback.

Community is key

We have lots of fun community initiatives to support our culture – with exclusivity as the main objective. We continued our Monday night yoga classes over Zoom, Strava and a WhatsApp group keeps our runners and cyclists in healthy competition and has even seen a spike in members…

Our dining table is the heart of the business where people come together around mealtimes and Friday drinks to catch up with colleagues. We opened up a virtual lunch table meeting room on Zoom once a week for anyone to drop in and out of and catch up and on Fridays Virtual Beers are very much a thing.

Pub quizzes, life drawing classes, cocktail masterclasses you name it, we’re trying it. These initiatives and ideas are coming from our people, demonstrating community and drive to maintain our culture, is very much present.