Airbnb and their thoughtful approach to layoffs
Stories, thoughts and insights on people, culture and startups.
Last week Airbnb announced they’re laying off 1,900 employees (25% of the company). The news is unfortunate but expected given the circumstances and their model/industry. Leaving aside the business challenges Airbnb is facing during these difficult times, what stands out is the high level of care the company put into the “offboarding” process.
To start, they defined principles on how to approach reductions. These principles were based around both core values and future business strategy (and therefore the need to adjust their workforce, retaining specific skill sets). Highlights include their commitment to diversity, optimising for 1:1 communication with impacted individuals, transparency, and helping as much as possible those leaving the company.
To care for those leaving, they offered a minimum of 14 weeks base pay, dropped the one-year cliff of equity vesting for everyone hired in the past year, covering 12 months of health insurance in the US (and covering health care cost for those outside the US until the end of 2020), and launched initiatives to maximise exposure for people in need for a new job. An example is Alumni Talent Directory, a public-facing website to help teammates leaving find new opportunities, where departing employees can opt-in to have profiles, resumes, and work samples accessible to potential employers.
You can read the full announcement here →
These days we’re talking extensively about working from home. That’s the new reality a good portion of us is facing. We are highlighting pros and cons, how the future of work might look like if fully remote, but something that is important to keep in mind, is that the effectiveness of a model can’t be measured during “unique” circumstances.
People forced to stay home, perhaps with the added stress of a business going through tough times and with a reduced workforce, are working longer hours, sometimes over the weekend, and ultimately taking less time off. I used to believe that taking a day off for staying at home was not that helpful. I was wrong. It’s not necessarily true that in order to recharge you need a “proper” holiday (although that would certainly help). Content switch (and some rest) is what we need to recharge and avoid burnout.
Dipti Salopek (VP People at Snyk), announced a few days ago that the company declared May 15th as Mental Health Day. During this day the company will be shut down so people can take a moment to recharge. I find initiatives like these worth a praise, as ultimately employers need to step up and do as much as they can to ensure employees can produce quality work while in their best physical and mental shape.
Snyk is also one of the very first companies that I know of that open sourced their approach to working from home during Covid-19 (you can check this here) and most recently created a framework for the path to return to work – again, publicly shared.
Dipti was interviewed by Lars Schmidt for the 21st Century HR podcast towards the end of March, and shared great insights – totally worth 30 minutes of your time.
Here are a few more interesting findings from last week
The Suddenly Remote Playbook by Toptal
A playbook for sustaining an enterprise-grade remote work environment from the world’s largest fully remote company.Being a great remote manager (Gitlab)
Considerations for being an excellent remote manager.Google expects its staff to work from home until 2021
Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, told Google employees on Thursday to be ready to work remotely through October and possibly to the end of the year.I was under lockdown in China - here is what its really like to go back to work
China is (slowly) going back to work. Here’s what an employee learned when returned to the office in Beijing at the architecture firm Gensler.
Bonus
Ever heard about Animal Crossing New Horizons? Nintendo did a pretty great job there; match their execution with people’s creativity, and you get things like Deserted Island DevOps – a single-day virtual tech event with all presentations taking place in the world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This is effectively the first virtual conference in Animal Crossing – amazing! 🤩
Take a look here →
I hope you enjoyed reading, and if you have thoughts or feedback you can reach me on Twitter.
Have a wonderful Tuesday,
Giovanni
Humaans – People Operations simplified
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