Creating a Positive Culture in a Remote and Digital Age
June 25, 2025 – As the workplace continues to evolve into hybrid and fully remote environments, the concept of company culture is being redefined. In the absence of traditional office settings, leaders must rely on intentional and nuanced approaches to foster engagement, trust, and a sense of community among dispersed teams.
This shift demands more than just logistical adjustments—it calls for a recalibration of leadership qualities and styles to ensure employees remain connected, motivated, and aligned with the organization’s mission and values. The question, then, is not whether culture can survive in a virtual environment, but how leaders can best cultivate it in a way that strengthens business outcomes and employee experience alike.
So what qualities or leadership styles are most effective for fostering a strong company culture in hybrid or fully remote environments? This question of deep engagement and company strength in hybrid and fully remote environments draws on qualities and styles that proved effective in the prior period, according to Jon Levitt, chief strategy officer of BrainWorks.
“Transparent and communicative leadership is paramount to retain cohesion,” he said. “Making a practice of building correct spans of control to allow leaders to be able to offer one on one communication and to transmit critical business and cultural initiatives is also vital.” Further, Mr. Levitt notes that using the heuristic of “catching your employees doing something good” will also assist in creating connection and an atmosphere and culture that are best in class than the alternatives.
Related: Fostering A Strong Workplace Culture to Drive Business Growth
“Organizations continue to seek out culture-focused leaders,” Mr. Levitt said. “Assessments play a role in this in many forms including Hogan and its many equivalents, proprietary cultural assessments developed by companies, or their executive recruiters or third party vendors. However, these alone are not sufficient to make a culture determination. Executives who have taken the journey time and again and can discern, with the input of assessment tools, their talent acquisition groups and their executive recruiter partners are most likely to succeed.”
Common Mistakes
The first mistake leaders make when trying to build or maintain culture in a remote setting is failing to communicate at minimum on Zoom or Teams or Huddle and, more importantly ,one-on-one in personal and meaningful ways, Mr. Levitt explained.
Activating Culture in a Remote World
In this episode of Talent Talks, host Rob Adams welcomes Jon Levitt, chief strategy officer at BrainWorks, a leading boutique executive search firm with a 30-year track record of sourcing and placing top talent. Jon shares his perspective on how organizations can intentionally activate and sustain culture at every level — even in remote and hybrid environments.
Together, Rob and Jon explore practical tools and frameworks BrainWorks uses to make culture actionable, the critical role communication plays in building culture, and subtle indicators that reveal whether a company’s culture is thriving or struggling. Jon also discusses how technology should (and shouldn’t) support culture in distributed teams, and how the definition of culture fit is evolving in executive hiring.
Tune in for fresh insights and actionable takeaways that leaders can apply immediately to strengthen organizational culture and drive performance. Listen now!
“Further, failure to organize spans of control in such a manner that enables deep relationships cannot be achieved is an error. Missing the opportunity to add culture building activities like clubs, speakers, professional development, networking and travel events, retreats and more further eliminate the opportunity to build culture and foster success,” he said. “Companies have increased their delivery of and enhanced their execution of a litany of activities to drive engagement and connectivity and senior leadership is always accountable for these elements in that they are integral to achieving business objectives. While executive leadership isn’t directly delivering clubs, speakers, classes, conferences, retreats, one-on-ones, group activities, trips, events and more, the role of executive leadership in ensuring compelling culture remains paramount.”
So what tools or practices are high-performing organizations using to create a sense of belonging and shared purpose remotely? “For starters, training on and confirming the use of a direct communication tool like Slack and its equivalents during the onboarding process is vital,” Mr. Levitt said. “There is a percentage of employees that use those tools and technologies less than others and by way of that, experience themselves as more disconnected from or outside an organization. Having compelling gatherings in a collaborative meeting environment like Zoom or Teams and going beyond communication of and exchange of business objectives related discussion to human interaction is essential in this regard.”
“There is a noticeable shift in how candidates evaluate company culture now that they often interact with organizations primarily through digital channels,” said Mr. Levitt. “Primarily, the form through which candidates appear to evaluate organizations is through increased questions about how the prospective company plans to solve for issues related to culture, community and belonging with a general bent to follow with questions that further probe the issue. Organizations are well advised to be prepared to respond to these questions.”
Related: How to Create an Organizational Culture That Attracts Talent
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
