Alastair Simpson; Dropbox
Allison Vendt; Dropbox

Brainstorm Design 2022 - Workplace Reinvention Going Virtual First

Conferences

 Workplace Reinvention Going Virtual First

So we often think about design teams, solving more external problems. Um we're collecting were excuse me we're connecting products and services um with customers that build them. Um but when the company work for flips its entire working model from 97 uh in the office pre pandemic going completely virtual first the design team gets to solve a really cool in house problem and that's the case that Dropbox the design team actually co lead with HR in designing a transformative workplace initiative to get everybody to go virtual first. So we're gonna hear from the two executives that work together on this together um and they got to promote both productivity but also uh staff engagement was really important. So please welcome to the stage Alistair Simpson, the vice president of design at Dropbox along with Allison vent the head of people, strategy and operations and analytics at Dropbox and joining them in conversation will be fortune leadership editor, ruth. Um Oh all right, good morning everyone Alistair Allison welcome. It is so great to have you both with us. Great much to discuss. So let's begin by level set in as was noted in the introduction. Dropbox employs a virtual first work model first of all, how do you define that? I guess you know the levels that pre pandemic, Roughly 3000 people uh distributed across the world, mainly co located in offices. And so when we flip the model, just the very kind of basics, we went virtual first what we're calling it we primary experience for employees to work remotely from a home office but then we've importantly we recognized the importance for in person collaboration and so we've retained some office space but rebranded them studios and then we've intentionally designed them for um moments of collaboration and culture building. So what you won't see at a drop box studio is rows and rows of death for people to individually work because they're purposefully designed for people to meet, collaborate and come together to have this kind of special moments. So to confirm, Virtual First should not be conflated with remote only. Correct? Yeah. And, you know, we we recognize the importance of human to human kind of in person collaboration. It's really important whilst we think and we know we see from research that people want flexibility in how they work and they don't necessarily want to commute every day. Absolutely, We'll soon be digging into that very research with far more granularity. Before I do. Uh And as was noted during the introduction, pre pandemic, 97% of drop boxes, employees work in the office, meaning just 3% work from home. You since made this pivot to a Virtual First work model that was really created in partnership between the design function and the HR team, walk us through how a design wound up co leading the initiative alongside the people, organizations with very different factions. Yeah. Alison depressed that in a second, but I guess the, you know, for me there's two reasons, I mean, one, you know, slightly tongue in cheek answer is, you know, I kind of elbowed my way in a little bit, but I do believe personally that as executive design leaders we have to interact with and partner with functions outside of just engineering a product. So we have to reach out and work with the chief people officer to work with our Cfos because I believe in this level, you have to have company wide kind of durable impact and if you can design a better company in a better system, then your teams are going to produce better products. And so that's just from a personal point of view, how I think about my role as an executive design leader. The second point really comes from Dropbox is that we saw this as an opportunity to redesign how we work because if we're honest with ourselves pre pandemic, the office didn't really work and how we were working didn't really work for many people. And so we really wanted, we saw this as a design problem and how do you actually apply design thinking or human centered design, basically putting the employee as your customer at the center of everything you do and then actually, you know, create a hypothesis, build something, tested iterate on that and kind of measure and learn. And so we really saw this as a design problem as a company and that was why I kind of colette along with Allison and mel, the Chief people officer, this initiative Allison, I'd love to hear from you, why integrate from a talent strategy perspective the design function, we have this cross functional approach. Yeah, I mean I think uh you know very much to echo what Alistair said when we initially kind of kicked off this project, like in terms of what does remote work look like a dropbox, it really began as an HR LED initiative. Um and I think we very quickly realized um that this was going to require just an enormous transformation or reimagining of everything that we do at dropbox End to End talent strategy, obviously being a huge part of that, but also things like our physical spaces, how we think about security and privacy and then importantly our practices and how we work together. And so um I think that you know, we were really lucky because we um Alistair actually I think you started a couple of months before um we ended up kind of kicking off this initiative and uh you know and Alistair had a lot of experience um at at a previous company actually be several previous companies working um in this space. And so uh and again I think because it requires such an enormous transformation and truly unlearning and unwinding behaviors that have been in place for over a century, we really did want to take a really innovative approach and as Alistair said, a very human centered design approach to every piece of the employee experience And um even beyond that, how we operate as well. So that was really um I think what what anchor does? Absolutely. We've seen a number of tech companies call their employees back to the office. They say they're moving into a hybrid work structure. We've seen a number of financial institutions mandate that their employees return full time. So the obvious question is why choose a predominantly remote work strategy for the future of drop offs is workforce. I think, you know, when you listen to your employees, I think Ethan was talking yesterday that there's a future forum that slack kind of Khalid cell source. Um and they've got lots of data on uh survey results from listening to employees. When you listen to employees, they want flexibility, not just in where they work, but in their schedules and how they work. Because, you know, Allison just mentioned that the kind of modern, well offers, It's really kind of been around 100 years, it goes back to kind of factory work synchronized in time, synchronized in the same place, like 9-5, just been extended by technology to go from 7-7. So you can answer email kind of before and after work. And so when you actually listen to your employees, what they're asking for is flexibility. Okay. And so what we've tried to do a Dropbox is then take those lessons from listening to our employees and then design an approach that optimizes for our employees, but also optimizes for our business. And so you mentioned that, I also mentioned the behavior shifts that we're trying to unwind and I think we'll share them on the actually let's cue that visual right now, because if you if you think about the shift that you're trying to make and these will probably resonate with many of you, you know, we're trying to unlearn that reflective habit to go to have synchronous meetings all day. The technology enabled us to go very quickly into kind of remote ways of working, but actually is it good to just be in back to back meetings all day? I don't know whether it necessarily is. And so certainly when you listen to employees, that's what they're struggling with. And so we've got these five behavior shifts that we've anchored all of our work in a drop box and this is based on market research and also internal kind of customer, internal employee data. And so what we're trying to do is help our employees change their behavior and unlearned habits that have been ingrained in us for over a century, as Allison mentioned. And so how do we help people go from the back to back zoom meetings to asynchronous by default. And some of the ways that we're doing that are things like we have a practice called core collaboration hours, which is four hours of synchronous work every day where that's connected to your local time zone. So for me in san Francisco I'm expected to be online between nine and one in my local time zone for synchronous collaboration or to synchronously reply to messages Outside of 9-1, I can create my own nonlinear workday that's flexible around my personal schedule. And so for example on Mondays and Fridays, I finished at three and I take my daughter swimming and that's what I did and then I come back online later on in the evening. But in that time in that nonlinear workday we're asking people to work more a synchronously by default. So the behavioral shift that we're trying to get to. And so all of our practices have been anchored around trying to help our employees change their behavior for the better. And then you know, focusing on these kind of five shifts that were at least I'd like to q a visual to while I pivot to the next question. Dropbox studios, how does that fit into this overarching strategy? Yeah. So I mean our dropbox studios definitely play an important role in our overall strategy. Alistair mentioned, human connection is something that we believe is really important. It's really important at Dropbox but beyond that it's very important period and there's really no replacement for that. And so we wanted to enable um you know that as much as possible. I think this is you know right now we have Dropbox studios in all of the locations where we previously had um offices and as I also mentioned, they've been, you know, completely redesigned to focus on group collaboration, there also a space for connection as well. And so um how we think about utilizing those studios is teams have budget to travel to the studios once per quarter, uh and uh you know, and then you have these sort of multi day off sites where um we really try to focus on what what are like complex problems that you're trying to solve. Um strategy planning, um really sort of like the richness of of what you can um you know, kind of do in person, that's really important for the dropbox studios. Um some of our teams are still somewhat co located, so some teams may go in more regularly than that and I think this is something um you know, we actually just opened our studios in March of this year um given all of the uncertainty with covid and so I think we're really learning um also and evolve, will evolve our studio model over time. Uh And and you know, just really looking at year one is gathering a lot of data right now, the only thing I'd add is like, you know, one of the principals around how I went to studio is just to keep it special, it's like what is that? And that's something we've just tried to help and guide employees. It's like, you know, it is important to me, but keep it special special, like what is if I think about another thing that we share in our toolkit, that's something I'd I'd plug um you can anyone can go and download this and use it online. It's the Dropbox Virtual first toolkit and it's 20 practices is essentially designed thinking democratized in a box around how to kind of change your habits. And one of those linking to keep it special is how do you reduce unnecessary meetings? Okay. Because if you think about it, you know, most of us, probably most people are in back to back meetings, but a lot of those meetings may not be necessary for synchronous time. And so something that we have in that socket is Make sure that your synchronous moments around the three D. So for important decision making discussion and debate. Okay. And that might be something that you can accomplish remotely or to the to the principal around keeping it special, Maybe you actually need to come in and meet in person because it's Allison's point, you're trying to solve a really complex problem where you actually need to meet in person and that's a good moment for when to gather in person and to actually utilize like being face to face for deep work. Absolutely. Allison, you repeatedly used the phrase evolve or evolution and I know that the adoption of new work models requires an adjustment period would have been the most significant challenges to implement in a virtual infrastructure uh and more importantly, what, you know, what what changes have you instituted as a result, whereas in response. Yeah, I mean I think first and foremost is the fact that these um work behaviors are so ingrained into all of us and so it requires a lot of intention, um a lot of leadership modeling um and and just a lot of kind of consistency of um you know, how we're messaging, messaging this across dropbox. And so I think that um that sort of unlearning um these behaviors has probably been the biggest challenge um and also that it needs consistent attention and it's for example, um Alistair talked about to reduce unnecessary meetings, practice my personal favorite practice and that's when I actually have to run that almost weekly because it's it's a very real problem. Meeting creep absolutely happens. And so it's also about just sort of reinforcing that message over and over again. And I think, you know, frankly when we initially announced this strategy in October 2020, there were skeptics uh for sure, and I think a lot of what we had to do was um you know, obviously reinforced the model, but also talk about the benefits and I actually think that adoption and um buy into the model has come as we've seen results over, you know, the last year and a half, which have been consistently trending upwards in terms of folks getting more better work life balance, more productivity, more focused time. And we've really been transparent about what's working and also what isn't and and and adapting our model to address that too. And so I think the more that um you know, we're sharing those really positive results and positive, the positive impact of Virtual First has helped with my in the start. I mean we've got an internal employee data that shows that 62% of people who've adopted virtual first report less meetings, less unnecessary meetings, 71% feel more productive. And and I think Allison said it quite kindly when she said we had skeptics quite honestly, you know, there were people that said this will never work. Like how does how do I say eight hours of meetings into four hours into my core collaboration. And I think you know, just to reinforce its that reinforcement of the message meeting people where they are with things like the Virtual First toolkit to give them scaffolding and frameworks for how they can change their behavior and then modeling that as a leadership team. You know, my calendar is fully open. We've got blogs internally from myself and other senior leaders about how we're adopting these practices practices so we're showing that it can be done following up to that remote work culture is truly meant to be an extension of the overall corporate culture, which is certainly hard to build even when you are in office, How are you building a strong culture in a distributed work model, especially if you're hiring and onboarding employees who might never touch foot in a physical office space. I like, I would start with, you know, something I've mentioned, but the virtual first toolkit, we have practices in there that are not just about how you work, but how you understand who your teammates are. And so things like creating a team charter, creating your team values. Okay, so this is these are practices around how you can learn more about the people that you're working with. Research shows as well that not just our own internal research, but external research shows that generally, you know, if your your table and that's the team that you work with, your ties with those people will be quite strong even in a remote culture or remote way of working, but you're weak tie relationships. So if you look to the table to across your weak tie relationships that you don't often engage with will be weaker because you don't see people in and around the office. And so something that we're just rolling out based on this research for us is we're we've created neighborhoods. And so those neighborhoods for myself, I'm in Palo alto. So it's like my Palo alto neighborhood. So it's just people that live in my area, right? My community of people that I may not necessarily work with, but I actually have a kind of proximity to. And so we're encouraging those people to meet monthly. We're encouraging them to do things like social impact in their community. So that you build back those kind of weak tie relationships that have been eroded in the kind of remote ways of working. And so there are a couple of things that we're doing to try and really reinforce their culture. Allison some companies are cut in pay for remote employees to reflect local labor costs. Does this shift to a digital default work model affect employee compensation. So if Dropbox workers move to locations with lower cost of living, do you adjust pay? Yeah, I mean it's a great question and it's certainly something that we keep really top of mind that our people team at dropbox um we do adjust for cost of labor uh across the board. And that's something I mean at the end of the day our compensation team anchors in data and that's what the data shows right now. Um and so we are you know, we evaluate this on a consistent basis. It could evolve. But right now the data supports anchoring to a cost of labor. We actually don't anchor to cost of living the cost of labor and Mark. And within those markets. Um And so that's our strategy right now. But again um one core principle of virtual first is taking a learning mindset and our compensation team is definitely taking that to heart. And so were consistently kind of evaluating the data around that. Absolutely. I wish to go back to the topic of remote work culture and turn to you Alistair specifically with your design team. How do you keep, how do you ensure that everyone is engaged and not only collaborating but collaborating effectively. You know, it would be one of my personal values is openness and so in terms of how I practice that every two weeks I'll share what's top of mind for me in a dropbox paper post and then encourage people to comment and that just helps people understand the things that I'm thinking about and the things that are top of mind for me and and then I'm regularly communicating in in things like slack and then office hours, I have monthly office hours that anybody in my organization can sign up to, not just my direct reports. And I think that principle about being open transparent with the information that you have and being able to connect with your team enables kind of more trust because people understand who I am, I'm not just some aloof VP and that trust then helps foster better moments of collaboration across the group and so that's incredibly important to me is that and a drop up very well said well the pandemic has upended so much in our lives but it's also providing the opportunity to reimagine and re engineer work in a way that really centers the needs of an organization's most important resource. Their talents, Alistair Allison, thank you both for your time and such a robust conversation. That was fantastic.