WLP349: What's Going On: Digital Culture
Today’s episode was inspired by a job post for an academic post in a university who was familiar with “digital culture”. Pilar had never heard the term as such, so she googled it and found a few articles, one of them by Slack. It’s a good piece from which to start a conversation.
Recorded on 13 February 2024.
We recorded on Tuesday 13th February 2024 - did you know that Tuesday 13th is a dangerous day in Spain to get married or to set off on a trip? (13 martes, ni te cases ni te embarques.)
Continuing with the Spanish theme, Pilar recorded an episode in Spanish for Adventures in Podcasting, with the cohosts of La Gran Renuncia. Their “remote work origin story” is quite special, so Pilar is thinking of using AI to bring some of their conversation to you!
Today’s episode was inspired by a job post for an academic post in a university who was familiar with “digital culture”. Pilar had never heard the term as such, so she googled it and found a few articles, one of them by Slack. It’s a good piece from which to start a conversation.
The teams best prepared for change use modern digital communication tools, feel comfortable learning new ones and continually adapt how they work
By the team at Slack, 29th July 2022
The article’s definition is the following:
"Digital culture is a workplace shaped and influenced by digital tools and technologies."
Is digital culture what you are left with after you have done digital transformation? Then, with all the constant changes and innovations in technology, are we ever going to get there?
Is it about how we behave as a result of working with technology, and what our relationship with technology is as an organisation? How much do we want to be shaped and influenced by the technology we use - as opposed to our culture influencing the technology we adopt?
A lot of digital transformation has happened for knowledge workers, but the front-line workers are feeling that divide. Pilar read an anecdote in the book “The Rise of the Frontline Worker” about a woman who had to travel into work at the weekend to find out what her shift was for the week, not too long ago. Can some areas of the organisation have completely different versions of their “digital culture”?
The aim is not to have a “digital culture”, but a positive one, and the article provides some of what we might aspire to:
use digital comms to make work faster and easier
build genuine connections (instead of waiting to go into the office to do so - our note!)
automate repetitive processes
create inclusive online environments
enable meaningful online customer experiences.
In theory, this would lead to:
Openness + transparency.
Greater agility and adaptability
Enhanced collaboration and innovation
Enhanced data collection (and making that data visible and meaningful - another of our notes!)
15.14mins
The article has some examples that have left us wanting to know more…
Regarding Ameritrade, where many people were already using Slack, did its use change, shifting (maybe) from informal conversations to more important communication, which needed to be kept confidential. How did people navigate this, and what kind of questions must have come up?
It also wasn’t surprising that once company announcements were moved from email to #announcements, there was much, much more engagement. Overall, use of email was reduced by 30% - is this a consequence of working out loud, of threading, or people not wanting to write message as much in the open?
If you want examples of messed up digital culture, have a look at this post by Joan Westenberg on LinkedIn.
And this thread in Reddit (which allowed Pilar to rant about poor audio!)
Let’s be honest, are we simply procrastinating by spending so much time tweaking our work apps?!
Are we going to start seeing the rise of the Digital Culture Officer? And is it time to stop thinking about the tech and look at how using it is affecting our behaviour?
35.00 mins
In other news…
Pilar has been using Claude AI to analyse the chapters of her new book on Shakespeare and remote work, to give her suggestions on how to improve the content. One of the things it suggested was to find some data to support her hypothesis that while restaurants in city centres were losing trade, the ones in the suburbs were gaining customers. “The winners and losers of London’s work from home economy” City.com 17 Sept 2023
She came across the acronym “TWaT” for those who only go into the office on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays. Hmpf!
39.00mins
Personal updates: Remote Work Europe keeps growing, with new countries joining: Belgium, Cyprus and Turkey now have their own groups, check them out:. And if you want to join the premium community, go to https://www.remoteworkeurope.eu/connected And RWE even has a presence on TikTok!
Pilar isn’t on TikTok but is doing a lot of podcasting - both hosting and guesting.
She’s now doing a monthly version of the newsletter.
You can listen to her on the Remote Work Life podcast with Alex Wilson-Campbell.
And remember that we have a course on asynchronous communication for remote team managers.
We’d love to hear what you think about all this! And if you have any questions or any recommendations for future topics, do get in touch!
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