Seven ways COOs can build strong culture in a remote or hybrid team

Executive overview

Post-COVID, culture can no longer rely on office perks, physical space, or proximity. The challenge for COOs is creating cohesion and alignment when teams rarely share the same room.

Culture is built on four pillars: core values, vivid vision, BHAG, and core purpose. Everything else — the lunches, the perks, the office — is decoration. Get the foundations right and the systems work whether your team is remote, hybrid, or in-person.

Culture is alignment with a shared foundation, not a set of office perks.

Keeping remote teams connected day-to-day

• Schedule a weekly one- or two-hour silent Zoom co-working block — people work on mute but stay visible
• Use Slack actively to thank, praise, and humanise interactions
• Run online social events (e.g. music bingo, workplace trivia) through providers like WorkPlayJam
• Encourage fun Zoom filters and custom backgrounds during team calls

Hiring to raise the bar, not just fill seats

• Every new hire should rank above the median of the team they're joining
• Evaluate on behavioural traits, core values, energy, experience, and drive — not just skills
• One plus one should equal three: each hire lifts the team's overall level
• A sports team never signs a player who merely fits in; neither should you

The four pillars of culture

• Core values: explain why they matter, how they're lived daily, how they're used in hiring and firing
• Vivid vision: ensures everyone sees the same future the organisation is building toward
• BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal): a unifying long-term target
• Core purpose: the foundational "why" that everything else aligns to

Indoctrinating new employees into culture

• Start with the genesis story — how the founder started, how early employees built the foundation
• Deep-dive core values in onboarding: link them to what was seen in the interview and how the company acts on them
• Explain the core purpose clearly: why does this business exist, and how does each role serve that purpose
• These three elements — history, values, purpose — form the base from which everything else emerges

What no longer works as a cultural anchor

• Physical office perks (free lunches, massages, the "wee room") exclude remote employees
• Proximity-based cohesion cannot scale to hybrid or distributed teams
• Culture tied to a building disappears when people stop coming in