Early on in the pandemic, we introduced employee wellbeing surveys to understand how our employees were feeling and help address pain points as we moved our offices to our homes. It’s led to real change in our programs and policies, including extended parental leave, childcare benefits, office set-up stipends and more.

This employee feedback has guided our re-opening strategy and how we’ll work going forward. We learned that nearly half of our employees want to come in only a few times per month, but also that 80% of employees want to maintain a connection to a physical space. So we are giving employees flexibility in how, when and where they work with three ways of working:

1) Flex – When it’s safe to return to the office, most of our employees around the globe will work flex. This means they’ll be in the office 1-3 days per week for team collaboration, customer meetings, and presentations.

2) Fully Remote – For employees who don’t live near an office or have roles that don’t require an office, they will work remotely full-time.

3) Office-based – The smallest population of our workforce will work from an office location 4-5 days per week if they’re in roles that require it.

Our employees are the architects of this strategy, and flexibility will be key going forward. It’s our responsibility as employers to empower our people to get the job done during the schedule that works best for them and their teams, and provide flexible options to help make them even more productive.

Driving Greater Equality 

And creating more flexible schedules removes hurdles that may make it more difficult to be in the office daily — from picking up kids to caring for sick family members.

In our always-on, always-connected world, it no longer makes sense to expect employees to work an eight-hour shift and do their jobs successfully. Whether you have a global team to manage across time zones, a project-based role that is busier or slower depending on the season, or simply have to balance personal and professional obligations throughout the day, workers need flexibility to be successful.

At the same time, we acknowledge that as the nature of our workforce changes, we will have to be even more intentional about our culture and cultivating an environment of inclusion, belonging, and equality.

Reimagining our spaces 

We have always been an innovator when it comes to our real estate. We opened Towers around the world, including the tallest office building west of the Mississippi in San Francisco, our HQ. And we created our own design standard, so everyone who entered our buildings felt the spirit of our culture. For us, our real estate is about more than architecture and design. It’s about creating a place that has a lasting positive impact on our employees, partners, customers, communities and the environment around us.

So when we thought about how to reimagine our spaces, we saw an incredible opportunity to create the office of the future.

The majority of our employees will go back to the office at least some of the time. And we’ve learned that 80% of our employees are hungry for the connection, camaraderie and innovation that come from gathering in-person.

To start, we’ll be redesigning our workspaces over time as community hubs to accommodate a more hybrid workstyle. Gone are the days of a sea of desks — we’ll create more collaboration and breakout spaces to foster the human connection that can’t be replicated remotely.