Airbnb CEO: Offices need to be redesigned

Last week, Airbnb announced it would allow its employees to work from anywhere in the country they live in without any change in salary.

While the travel company cannot currently support “permanent international moves”, it will allow employees to live and work internationally for up to 90 days at a time.

In a letter to employees where he announced the new policy, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote: “You’ll have the flexibility to do what’s best for your life—whether that’s staying put, moving closer to family, or living in a place you’ve always dreamed of”.

This policy has been greeted with enthusiasm by Airbnb’s employees, but it has also been a real boom or the accommodation company’s hiring strategy.

In an earnings call discussing results for the first quarter of 2022, Chesky stated:

“The response internally was great, but even more impressive with the response externally because our career page was visited 800,000 times after that announcement.

“I think that this just speaks to the durability of this use case, and I think that it’s going to continue.”

The future of offices

While working remotely and from anywhere is the future at Airbnb, Chesky doesn’t believe that the office is dead.

He shared with employees: “We believe that the most meaningful connections happen in person. Zoom is great for maintaining relationships, but it’s not the best way to deepen them.

“Additionally, some creative work and collaboration is best done when you’re in the same room.

“The right solution should combine the best of the digital world and the best of the physical world.

“It should have the efficiency of Zoom, while providing the meaningful human connection that only happens when people come together. We have a solution that we think combines the best of both worlds.”

However, Chesky is clear that the office of the future needs to look very different.

Talking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO council summit, Chesky noted: “I think an office as we know it is kind of an outdated notion. It’s primarily, as it’s currently designed, an anachronistic form factor from a pre-digital age.”

The next step for Airbnb, therefore, is to redesign its office to drive better collaboration. “I would like us to be really innovative in the office and workplace design of the future and I think we have to live in this new world to figure out what it’s going to look like.”

Another change for Airbnb will be having a smaller office footprint. It will use the money it saves on that for “travel entertainment to gather people”, which Chesky hopes to do for a week once a quarter.

Chesky is not alone in rethinking the way that employers use offices. Many companies are making their offices greener and more sustainable to drive wellbeing and productivity, while others like Dropbox have completely overhauled their office spaces.

Dropbox head of international HR Laura Ryan told UNLEASH that Dropbox has repurposed its offices into collaboration hubs. This means they are places for teams to come together for “social connection and community building”, notes Ryan.

She explains: “There’s no workstations in those. Solo work is done outside of those spaces and in a remote way”.

Are you ready to rethink the role your office plays in the future of work, and therefore what it should look like?