Josh Bersin: With Thoughtful Design And Culture, Dropbox Proves Remote Work Is A WinnerDropbox, a company with a $7 billion market cap and over $2.5 billion in revenue, has adopted a "Virtual First" strategy in response to the pandemic, transforming its work model from lavish San Francisco offices to a remote-first approach. This shift was led by CEO Drew Houston and Chief People Officer Melanie Rosenwasser, moving away from an office-centric culture to enhance productivity and teamwork through remote work. The strategy includes home office stipends, Dropbox Studios for face-to-face interactions, and innovative meeting management services. Despite initial challenges, this approach has led to high employee satisfaction and a strong talent strategy, allowing Dropbox to thrive in a competitive tech landscape.
One of the most interesting tech companies we’ve studied is Dropbox, a $7 billion market cap rocket ship generating more than $2.5 billion in revenue. This kind of company, which sells a platform that competes with Microsoft, Google, and other major players, lives in a world of brutal competition: competition for product leadership, sales deals, and talent. And today, as AI engineers are in short supply, Dropbox has to attract the best and brightest to continue its growth.
In its early days, Dropbox was a typical San Francisco-based tech company with gourmet food, gorgeous offices, and a culture of lavish benefits. In the pre-pandemic 2010s this was the rage, and Dropbox became a hot place to work.
The pandemic upset that applecart. Not only did “work at home” obsolete the company’s real estate and gourmet investments, it forced the company to rethink its culture. The Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser, told me that the first few months of the pandemic were traumatic. Employees were upset by working at home and weren’t sure what the company stood for. She and Drew Houston, the CEO, had to rethink the whole operating model.
As Melanie described it to me, they took a risky, irreversible move. They decided to totally shift their operating model from that of “San Francisco gourmet offices” to “energized, empowered, team-based, remote work.” Not an easy decision.
Note that just this week Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO and board member at Google, blamed Sundar Pichai for “remote work laziness” as cause for Google’s “falling behind in AI.” So the debate about remote work continues, and some of the most successful leaders still haven’t figured it out.
Well Drew, Melanie, and the Dropbox team placed a bet. Knowing that the pandemic had interrupted their campus investments, they dramatically shifted to a “Virtual First” strategy. And they told the company “we are moving away from an office-centric culture” and going to a model of remote-first work. And this included converting offices to Dropbox Studios as well as a carefully architected approach to teamwork, collaboration, and periodic face-to-face activity.
Rather than ask people to “come in 3 days a week” (this kind of policy bugs people because they drag themselves into the office just to zoom with others at home), they designed one of the most sophisticated approaches I’ve seen. Employees receive a generous stipend for home office improvements and the company now offers a series of programs, services, and tools to make team and personal productivity thrive.
While it seemed risky it worked exceedingly well. By holistically thinking about culture, management, teamwork, and productivity, the company developed a set of innovations that empower people to work at their best, meet with their teams at least one week per quarter, and come together when and where it makes sense. And this model, which looks like an HR innovation, became a business innovation that helps the company thrive.
While Dropbox lost a significant number of employees at first, now the company has one of the highest Glassdoor ratings in its industry (4.3, 85% recommend CEO, higher than Google). Dropbox wins awards for employment brand. And not only does Virtual First create productive operations, it helps the company build “tools for the new world of work,” which is where every company is going.
Work at home is complicated. In between dogs, kids, gardeners and delivery people we’re futzing with MS Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Docs, and dozens of other tools. Most of them work well but they’re each different and inconsistent. Dropbox, as a “system designed for remote work” simplifies this enormously. Virtual First helps Dropbox test its products on itself.
Why has Virtual First succeeded? As Melanie and the team explains, the shift turbo-charged its talent strategy. Now Dropbox can hire people from any geography in the world (reducing labor cost) and they look for high-energy, passionate, high-performers (not employees who like the offices). Teamwork is stronger than ever.
I know, from our company, that this works well. We have 40+ people in our organization and we rely on frequent face-to-face meetings, an open culture, and tremendous amounts of training and communication to grow. Back when I ran our company in an office we hardly talked with each other unless we had a meeting. Things are much more collaborative and productive now.
Dropbox has proven this at scale.
You can read about Virtual First on the Dropbox website, but one of the innovations I want to point out is the company’s “concierge service” for meetings. (The Offsite Planning Team.)
When you as a leader want to have a meeting, this team helps you decide your objectives, reviews the outcomes you want to achieve, and then puts together a detailed plan (location, logistics, agenda, tools) to help you make it work. This removes enormous amounts of wasted time from managers and helps the company operate productively.
I cannot tell you how much time I’ve wasted “managing offsite meetings.” To have a seasoned, professional group that helps with this entire strategy in process is a godsend. For Dropbox, this team now knows precisely how the teams work and can continuously improve its consulting services to make sure face-to-face meetings are impactful. A “new manager introduction” meeting, for example, is different from a “get product ready for launch meeting” as you can imagine.
How does this apply to your company? Regardless of industry, I guarantee you have remote work teams. Many companies have front line workers (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation) who have to locate with customers. But think about finance teams, IT teams, scientific teams, and HR. We all need productive remote work practices, and Dropbox has proven that a strategic focus on this area will pay off.
Melanie and I will be doing a webcast in the near future and she is joining us at our Irresistible 2025 Conference as well. Dropbox has taken the lead in this new world, and they want to share their learnings with all of us.
pandemic
2024年08月30日
pandemic
世界幸福报告能教给我们关于工作的什么? What The World Happiness Report Teaches Us About Work最新《世界幸福报告》揭示，尽管经济增长，美国幸福感下降。研究强调，高薪并非幸福的关键，而公平薪酬、良好的企业文化才是。特别是年轻人，受到气候变化、政治纷争等影响，幸福感低落。企业需关注文化建设、弹性工作，关照员工心理健康。工作场所的信任、社区感和公平至关重要。我们要反思：真正的幸福是什么？
我每年都认真研读《世界幸福报告》，今年的报告特别引人深思。以下是我对一些关键发现的解读。
首先，美国的幸福指数（10分满分）降至第23位，比全球最幸福的国家芬兰低了13%。实际上，在过去15年中，美国的幸福度几乎下降了8%，呈现出持续的年降趋势。对于我们这些生活在美国的人来说，这可能并不陌生：坏消息、政治争斗以及人们在价值观上的分歧似乎无处不在。
这一切发生的同时，美国的GDP增长却持续领先世界上大多数主要经济体。这意味着我们作为一个国家正在变得更加富裕，却显著地变得不那么幸福（下文将详细解释）。
从企业角度来看，这个观点很简单：仅仅提高薪资并不能使人们感到更加幸福。尽管每个人都希望得到公平的报酬，但高薪酬并不直接转化为高参与度。我们2023年的《薪酬公平终极指南》发现，与薪酬水平相比，薪酬公平与员工参与度的关联性高出7倍。
其次，报告指出，在美国，年轻人的幸福感明显低于老年人（这一点并非在所有国家都适用，但在大多数发达国家中是这样的）。在美国，30岁以下人群的幸福评分为6.4，而60岁以上人群的评分为7.3，幸福度低了12%。我们对年轻人的这一低幸福评分使美国在全球青年幸福排行榜上仅位列第62位，远低于我们的总体排名。
这反映出我在上周播客中讨论的现象。如今的年轻工作者担忧全球变暖，他们在年轻时就经历了疫情的冲击，他们对于战争、通货膨胀、社会问题以及政治不和感到沮丧。埃德曼信任度量尺表明，年轻人认为相比政府，企业在为社会带来创新方面更值得信赖，高出近20%。但令人担忧的是，这种信任程度也在下滑。
从企业的视角来看，这进一步强化了播客中提到的观点：我们（美国）的劳动力中位年龄现已达到33岁。这表明许多关键员工对生活的热情有所下降，这迫使雇主需要采取更多措施。我们对企业文化、员工福祉、工作灵活性和个人成长的关注，现在比以往任何时候都显得更为重要。这就是像四天工作周、灵活工作时间以及其他诸多福利（如生育支持、儿童看护、心理健康、健身、财务福利）变得越来越普遍的原因。
（最新的劳动统计局数据显示，我们在福利上的支出占工资总额的31.1%，比三年前的29%有所增加。在信息行业，这个比例高达35.5%，是有史以来的最高值。）
此外，重点强调：对企业来说，重振早期职业发展计划至关重要。许多企业在20世纪60、70年代建立了这些计划，但随后这些计划逐渐被忽视。如果你正在从大学招聘顶尖人才，并投资于校园招聘（这一趋势正在上升），那么确保你有一个坚实的1-2年发展计划、工作轮岗以及面向年轻人的群体参与计划是非常重要的。我最近与康卡斯特讨论了他们的计划，他们的早期职业发展计划正在直接为他们的领导力管道做出贡献。
第三，也是最引人注目的一点是，报告强调了社会关系和信任在幸福感中的巨大作用。进行这项研究的学者团队发现，幸福感的“坎特里尔阶梯”（一个简单的“你觉得自己多幸福”的1-10评分问题）可以分解为六个贡献因素：
人均GDP（财富）、社会支持（密切关系的数量和质量）、预期寿命（健康）、生活选择的自由（按个人意愿生活的能力）、慷慨（向他人给予金钱和时间的倾向）以及腐败感知（相信“系统”是公平的）。
这些因素对幸福的贡献度大开眼界。
令人惊讶的是，社会关系是幸福感的最大贡献者，而健康只占大约1.4%。请注意，第二重要的因素是对腐败的感知或者说是公平感，这解释了为什么薪酬公平非常重要。我们再次发现，财富对幸福感的影响相对较小。
这对我们的工作有何启示？
这里有一些简单的启示：
关系很重要。如果管理层和主管不能建立起团队合作感，员工便会感到不适。尽管我们面临财务和运营压力，但我们仍需抽时间了解员工、倾听他们的声音，并与他们共度愉快时光。通过聚集人员并创建跨功能团队，我们即使在远程工作情况下也能建立社交关系。
信任至关重要。我曾在高层领导贪婪、不忠、不诚实的环境中工作过，公司内的每个人都能感觉到这一点。信任是经年累月建立起来的资产，我们必须不断地进行投资。通过道德、诚实和倾听来培养信任，你的领导模式中包含了这些元素吗？
薪酬的影响可能比你想象的要小。虽然每个人都希望赚更多钱，但人们更希望感觉到奖励是公平且慷慨的。因此，不应仅仅过度奖励表现突出的员工，而忽视其他人的努力。
生活选择的自由极为重要。众多研究显示，与薪资相比，员工更加重视工作的灵活性，因此，考虑将四天工作周和灵活工作选项作为你的雇佣政策的核心部分是非常重要的。
多年前，我在一个人力资源领导者的大型会议上发表了关于企业公民责任的演讲。我指出，公司就像小型社会一样，如果我们的企业“社会”不公平、不透明、不自由，那么我们的员工就会感受到痛苦。演讲结束时，我不确定听众的反应如何，但来自宜家的一大群人向我走来，给了我一个热情的拥抱。宜家这家公司，深深植根于瑞典的社会主义文化，是地球上最长久的公司之一。他们真心相信集体思维、公平和对每个个体的尊重。
原文来自：https://joshbersin.com/2024/03/what-the-world-happiness-report-can-teach-us-about-work/
pandemic
pandemic
扫一扫
添加客服
