Belonging At Work: Airbnb
Nov 22, 2022
Airbnb is the organisation that everyone thinks of when they’re thinking about examples of a successful office culture. In fact, they’ve branded themselves as the company obsessed with culture.
Famously, CEO Brian Chesky sent an email to his entire staff early-on titled “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture.” Airbnb’s concept is all about belonging, their business idea is essentially about creating a travel model where anyone can belong anywhere. It makes sense, then, that their values would reflect this sense of belonging and hospitality. So let’s dive into how Airbnb creates belonging at the workplace.
The thing that will endure for 100 years, the way it has for most 100 year companies, is the culture. The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb
Hiring Practices
Airbnb’s hiring ethos is heavily based on their core values. They’re “obsessed” with company culture - so the people they hire need to fit the culture. As part of their hiring process, they’ve got core values interviews that are run by people outside of the job candidates are interviewing for, in order to filter out people that aren’t a cultural fit. The idea is to prioritise the right people over scaling quickly.
When people do prove themselves to be a cultural fit, they’re greeted with the Human Tunnel ritual (sounds ominous, I know). After each World@ meeting (cross-company team meetings that happen once or twice a week), all the employees form a human tunnel through which new hires run and jump onto a beanbag. The idea is that when you’re in, you’re in. Doubling down on this, Airbnb also tries to hire internally first for any position, before turning its gaze outwards.
Shared Values
The company mission is to create belonging anywhere in the world. It’s logical that much of their values are about community, collaboration, and giving back. In line with this thinking, they’ve got a volunteering programme in which employees have the opportunity to volunteer four hours per month by spending time with neighbourhood nonprofits.
Employee Wellbeing
One of the reasons Airbnb does so well in employee retention and happiness metrics is that their employees feel supported in their wellbeing. The benefits aren’t the most creative, but they’re effective. Airbnb offers healthcare, therapy support, in-office food, as well as technical skills training. Unsurprisingly, they also offer their employees annual travel credit of $2k, to encourage everyone to experience being a guest (and so to understand what makes guests feel like they belong).
Collaboration and Social Belonging
One of the ways Airbnb makes their employees feel like they belong is through strong social rhythms. They’ve got a Ground Control Group, a specialised team that looks after the workplace environment, internal communications, employee recognition, celebration and events, as well as the company internet that informs everyone of employee birthdays and anniversaries.
Their offices are also designed to feel like home. With an open space floor plan, employees can work from anywhere in an office, with different workspaces called ‘the kitchen counter’, ‘the dining room table’ and ‘the living room’. Where better to feel comfortable than at home?
Open Lines of Communication
Transparency is a core pillar of how Airbnb creates belonging. Essentially, they feel that for people to feel at home, they need to have all of the information available to them. Notes from executive meetings are shared company-wide, and the CEO sends weekly emails to all employees with whatever is on his mind. All of this is intended to open up a conversation across all levels of the organisation.
An interesting exercise they’ve got is the philosophy of “elephants, dead fish, and vomit”. Elephants are the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, dead fish are the thing that happened ages ago that no one can get over, and vomit is the word vomit that sometimes just needs to be vented about. Everyone across the company is encouraged to talk about the elephants, dead fish and vomit, in the hopes of creating a comfortable safe space to talk about whatever is on anyone’s mind.
Hybrid Working
Airbnb’s remote working policy was widely lauded for being flexible and adaptable to the post-COVID environment. It comes down to the idea that employees can work from wherever they want, work remote as often as they want, live and work in any of Airbnb’s locations, as long as they attend team meetings (that often happen for a week at a time).
Of course, being a travel company, it’s more flexible than most organisations will have the capacity for, but their bottom line can be taken away by anyone: be as flexible as possible, be transparent, and maintain regular whole-team gatherings.
The Bottom Line
Airbnb now earns billions in revenue, and have been lauded as Glassdoor’s #1 place to work in the past. It all comes down to their culture of belonging. It’s nothing crazy, they’re not reinventing the wheel with extraordinary wellbeing programmes or benefits, but they’re making sure they’re consistent. A genuine sense of belonging is baked into every aspect of the company. The takeaway from Airbnb’s success is simply a commitment to culture first.