Transforming Work with Sophie Wade 117: Allison Vendt - Virtual First: Research-based Intentional Reinvention for Modern Work
Allison Vendt is Senior Director, People Operations (Virtual First, People PMO, People Analytics) at Dropbox. She shares key reasons and research behind Dropbox’s transformation to ‘Virtual First’ starting with an office-centric culture. Allison discusses insights since the initial design phase and implementation including the change management required. She explains the ongoing evolution of the company’s virtual first approach to the Future of Work as they continue to pilot, learn, and iterate. Allison describes how they create high impact employees’ experiences with emphasis on culture, connections, and community.
TAKEAWAYS
[02:38] Allison quickly discovers law school is not for her and finds American studies fascinating.
[04:00] Allison wants to do something creative and starts working in media planning.
[04:55] Wanting more daily impact on people, Allison does a graduate degree in education.
[05:16] Allison was a student athlete herself – a swimmer.
[06:20] As an academic advisor, Allison runs orientation, tutoring, and development programs as well as coaching and counseling.
[06:48] Intrigued by Silicon Valley, while at Stanford, Allison runs a technology-integrated program for entrepreneurs.
[08:46] Parallels between high-achieving student athletes and Allison's current coworkers.
[10:19] Starting her first job in tech, Allison feels at home at once thanks to Dropbox's culture.
[11:24] While the L&D group transitions, Allison is open to experimenting and shifts role.
[13:18] Exploring how employees can own their careers through personal growth plans.
[14:08] More current focus on mentorship and skills.
[15:30] Pandemic shifts give Allison ‘Virtual First’ as her first strategy and operations project.
[16:40] Before 2020, Dropbox explores remote work while having an office-centric culture.
[18:02] The company's mission is relevant as they become intentional about reinventing what modern work looks like.
[20:44] Mindset shifts for virtual first, prioritizing human connection and adopting asynchronous by default
[22:22] Research on effective distributed work principles focused on an asynchronous by default mindset and upskilling everyone.
[23:48] Needing to reinvent everything, one work stream is dedicated to culture and community.
[24:57] Investing in cultural tethers and touchpoints that connect people and drive belonging include a neighborhood program with local relevant events.
[26:53] A mentoring program helps build weak ties, reinventing core elements for Virtual First.
[27:54] The empowering essence and elements of Dropbox’s self-serve mindset and strategy.
[29:48] Investing in training managers who play a critical role in distributed work effectiveness.
[30:52] Iterative ongoing piloting and learning with an open source Virtual First toolkit.
[32:19] Research drives the decision not to choose hybrid to avoid creating two employee experiences.
[34:06] Being transparent about choices and principles, Virtual First still wasn't for everyone, but some have returned.
[34:46] Virtual First is executed with a learning mindset, just like Dropbox builds products.
[35:26] Change management is critical for the organizational transformation.
[36:30] Onboarding is overhauled and refined—identifying synchronous and self-paced aspects.
[37:29] What are the frameworks for success? How to make Virtual First work for you.
[39:14] The potential for AI to reduce friction at work starting with AI training.
[40:40] Potential AI opportunities as behaviors and tools must go hand in hand to get more focus time and flow time.
[42:35] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Consider virtual first over hybrid. Whatever the size of your organization, you can adapt the core framework appropriately. Try a virtual first approach with one unit of your company to see if it could work. The benefits of happy productive employees outweigh the challenges.
RESOURCES
QUOTES edited
“We really had to take this opportunity to reinvent what modern work looked like.”
“We wanted to do our due diligence. We came up with a set of guiding principles that four years later continue to guide the work. It was really important for us to be intentional about what we were doing to have a solid design to kick us off.”
“Virtual First means we work remotely, that's our primary orientation of work. But we do prioritize human connection. We really believe there's just no replacement for that face-to-face in-person connection.”
“We had to reinvent how we work. All the research that we had done on effective distributed work principles was leading with an asynchronous by default mindset that we had to get really good at.”
“We try to think about meetings being for debate, decision making, and discussion, not about status updates, for example, which you can easily do asynchronously.”
“We were very clear we need to reinvent everything, including looking at our culture.”
"We've done a lot of transformation around the knowledge management piece. So much about Virtual First is about empowerment -- individual empowerment."
“The role of the manager is so critical in any workplace, but certainly in a distributed environment. So we've invested a lot in manager training, making sure that all of our Virtual First principles, research that we're learning and insights that we have are getting are embedded into our manager training.”
"We deliberately elected not to adopt a hybrid model that was based on the research that we had done. Ultimately, we felt like leveraging a hybrid model was going to create two different experiences for employees."