At first glance, you might expect COVID-19 to be a disaster for corporate culture. The widespread shift to remote work—half of employees in the U.S. were working from home in April—decreased the face-to-face interactions that reinforce organizational culture. The economic downturn in many industries and a spike in layoffs threaten to unravel the social fabric that holds companies together.

According to an ongoing analysis from MIT Sloan Management Review, the 1.4 million employee-written reviews on Glassdoor tell a very different story. To examine how the pandemic has influenced employees’ perceptions of corporate culture, MIT Sloan looked month by month at how workers at Culture 500 companies rated their employer for the five years through August 2020. When current or former employees review a company, they are asked to rate its culture and values on a five-point scale, from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied.”

The organization found that the average culture rating across the Culture 500 companies experienced a sharp jump between March and April 2020. The months of April through August 2020, which saw widespread lockdowns, shifts to remote work, and layoffs, occupy the top five spots in terms of average culture ratings during the five-year period.

One important theme that stood out in the months of the pandemic is the quality of communication by leaders. Employees of Culture 500 companies gave their corporate leaders much higher marks in terms of honest communication and transparency during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic compared with the preceding year.

Click here to read the full story from MIT Loan Management review.