Vacation rental giant Airbnb developed policies about remote work during the pandemic that later became the Airbnb Work From Anywhere Policy, which invites employees to work anywhere with no drop in pay, come to occasional meetups, and share transparent goals.
At a time when many companies are reconsidering their decisions about remote work and calling staff back to the physical office, others like Airbnb have decided to stick with it and have even developed systems to make it easier for employees. The Airbnb Work From Anywhere Policy is groundbreaking and is based on principles any company can use when formulating hybrid or full-time remote work policies.
Work Anytime, Anywhere
After two years of experimenting with remote work during the pandemic, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky announced a new corporate remote policy on Twitter in April 2022, which states:
- Employees can work from the office, home, or whatever they want.
- If they move within the country, like from San Francisco to Nashville, the compensation won’t change. (It may be adjusted for foreign moves with location-based pay tiers.)
- In each location, workers can live and work in 170 countries up to 90 days a year.
- Staff meets up regularly for team gatherings once a quarter for a week or more at a time.
- Airbnb works from a multi-year roadmap with two major product releases a year to keep staff working toward the same goals. Transparency is key!
Chesky recognized that this approach would not work for all companies, but it is particularly appropriate for his company which arranges lodges for travelers in the community rather than in hotels. A few workers with core functions must report to the office, but others could work anywhere. Like many other workers who geoarbitrage, Airbnb employees can set up shop where they want to live and where their money will go the furthest.
Evaluating How The Pandemic Changed Work
The company saw this reality:
In April 2020, when millions of workers were told to stay home from the office, many continued to do their job from home, while others checked out the concept of remote and ran with it. They went out of the country to Costa Rica. They went to their vacation homes in South Carolina. They went to Illinois to be nearer to kids and aged parents. When the crisis abated, many wanted to continue to do their jobs from out of the office.
At the height of the pandemic, many people relocated to other states or even other countries. The result was satisfied workers and satisfied employers as productivity levels were high. The downside for both employers and employees was unexpected tax consequences and red tape.
Airbnb took this information and asked the right questions about the future of work.
“… [W]here is the world going?
“The answer is obvious—the world is becoming more flexible about where people can work. We see this in our own business. We wouldn’t have recovered so quickly from the pandemic had it not been for millions of people working from Airbnbs. During the second half of 2021, 20% of our nights booked were for stays of longer than a month, and half were for stays of longer than a week.”
Airbnb evaluated what was happening and came to three conclusions:
- Airbnb suffered a slight downturn as fewer people relied on their service for vacations, but more turned to it for lodging when working remotely. He saw that Airbnb had an opportunity to be a housing provider for remote workers. “Our business wouldn’t have recovered as quickly from the pandemic if it hadn’t been for millions of people working from Airbnbs,” he noted.
- Based on experience at their company where staff worked at home during the pandemic, Airbnb had “the most productive two-year period in [their] company’s history,”
- Chesky also saw that allowing employees to work anywhere increased their talent pool. “Companies will be at a significant disadvantage if they limit their talent pool to a commuting radius around their offices,” Chesky writes. “The best people live everywhere.”
Before Covid, 95% of workers lived near their Airbnb office, but currently, 25% live more than 50 miles away.
Airbnb Work From Anywhere Policy Cuts Through Red Tape
Some companies were turned off by the hassle of managing remote workers, but Airbnb responded with a Work Anywhere Policy and developed the infrastructure to help workers deal with bureaucracy. While workers would still have to apply for and get work authorizations, the company partners with many local governments to make the process smoother.
Airbnb has a 30-person HR team that approves requests to move and informs employees of their tax liabilities and where they want to locate. The company requires that employees have a permanent address on file for tax purposes. Employees are responsible for any local and international taxes they are liable for, but Airbnb handles the filings.
Planned Gatherings Help Relationships Develop
With a geographically-dispersed workforce, Airbnb frequently uses Zoom for more company interactions. Chesky, however, believes in the value of in-person interaction, so the employees meet quarterly at various locations to collaborate and develop relationships that facilitate working together.
Mutual Benefits Of Airbnb Flexibility
As a company, Airbnb has significantly benefited from its flexible policies. They have reduced their office footprint to half of the pre-pandemic levels, hired qualified people, especially women and minorities from all over the globe, and dramatically reduced attrition. About 20% of the workforce has relocated domestically or traveled abroad, but many take remote work breaks throughout the year.
Some employees have used the new policy to maximize their salary. One employee, for example, moved with his wife and children from a crowded one-bedroom apartment in pricey San Francisco to Buenos Aires, where the cost of living is 30% to 40%. His wife now stays home with the kids, and the family can afford to travel frequently. He meets up with his 140-person team at the planned gatherings.
Will The Airbnb Approach Work Everywhere?
Airbnb does not claim that the policies they have in place will work for every company. Widespread remote work is in line with the company’s business, and corporate revenues are sufficient to support that they do to make remote work viable for all. Unless a company is willing to explore the possibilities of remote work and create an infrastructure to support it, extensive remote work might not be viable for many companies.
Some of their policies easily transfer to other companies struggling to develop guidelines for hybrid and total remote work:
- Be as flexible as possible in allowing those who want to work remotely to do so.
- Support remote communication but also schedule regular in-person gatherings.
- Don’t reduce compensation within the country because workers settle in a more or less-expensive city.
- Share company goals to keep workers engaged and on track.
