by Janus Boye
Marc Pazcian speaking about culture and change at a peer group meeting in Hamburg at the beginning of the year
Last month Dropbox announced their plans to go Virtual First. This means that remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work, also after COVID. It also means non-linear workdays and it’s Dropbox’s take on creating a sustainable, thriving workplace for the future.
In a recent member conference call, we heard from Marc Pazcian at Dropbox on what going virtual first means in practice and how this impacts creativity and collaboration. Marc is Solutions Architect and Cultural Ambassador at Dropbox DACH region. He's based in Hamburg, Germany.
Addressing the underlying limitations of remote working
Marc opened his talk with this memorable quote by Gloria Mark, a professor in informatics at the University of California, Irvine:
“Every time a person switches tasks, they make a cognitive shift which depletes their mental resources”
Focus is key and many have been more productive at home without the usual interruptions of the office. Still, Dropbox felt that going fully remote or hybrid as other companies have announced came with a few non-starters that did not fit with their company values, in particular around preserving human connection and the company culture.
Marc presenting to the Future Workplace peer group in Hamburg at the beginning of the year (pre-COVID)
When it came to a hybrid approach, Dropbox also had some valid concerns:
“[it]..may also perpetuate two different employee experiences that could result in barriers to inclusion and inequities with respect to performance or career trajectory”
The three key elements of virtual first
As Marc shared the elements of virtual first, he opened by saying:
No one wants to return to rigid 5-day work weeks
Firstly, there’s the location strategy. Dropbox will not provide office space as in the past, but they will provide collaborative spaces called Dropbox Studios in various locations. These can be used for workshops, brainstorming sessions and intended for in-person, but also well-connected so that you can do hybrid events. Employees will not be able to use them for solo work.
The Studios are not built yet, but they will be placed around the world.
From a visit to the Dropbox office in Hamburg in December 2019
Secondly, there’s the element of non-linear workdays. Today linear work is meetings 9 - 5. This is really not working as Marc said. Dropbox is setting core collaboration hours with overlap between time zones, and encouraging employees to design their own schedules beyond that.
During the Q&A in the call, the Guide to Internal Communication the Basecamp Way was brought up as a useful source of inspiration, in particular on asynchronous collaboration. The guide sets some ground rules, like questions start on Slack and you don’t just call meetings.
Thirdly and finally, there’s a new take on the employee experience. Dropbox is reviewing the experience throughout the organisation, from IT to HR, for virtual first environment. They’ve openly shared a virtual-first toolkit, which is a work in progress based on principles based on their experiences so far.
Marc outlined his take on how the experience is changing:
OKR’s are realigned to focus more on impact. Overall, there’s now less focus on busyness and more on impact
Increased flexibility in terms of structuring the day
An increased budget for employees and the tools they need, but also money so that they can go somewhere else to work
Learn more about the workplace of tomorrow
We’ve written quite a bit about this topic. Here are some of the popular posts:
Distributed Advantage At Elastic (May 2020)
Is It Safe To Change? Why Organizations Stay The Same (December 2018)
The Futility Of Meetings. Is The Future Workplace Meeting-Free? (January 2019)
The Quest For Inspiring Workspaces (November 2020)
You can also get out from behind your screen and join our Future Workplace peer groups.
Finally, you can also browse the slides (PDF) from the call or enjoy the entire 28-minute recording below.