Remote work keeps it inclusive

Transcription below:

Alyssa Place: (00:00)
Welcome to Perk Up! a podcast about workplace culture and benefits brought to you from the team at Employee Benefit News. I'm Alyssa Place, executive editor at EBN. With Perk Up, my colleagues and I are sharing the stories of businesses who have implemented forward thinking, covetable workplace policies and benefits, keeping their employees happy and their company's bottom line thriving. This week, I dive into the virtual first world of Thumbtack, where leaders and employees are reaping the benefits of an online work world.

Alyssa Place: (00:39)
What would you do if you could work from home forever? Would you move to a tropical island, buy a bigger house, revamp your home office, switch jobs, go for that big promotion cross country? The opportunities seem endless, and for employees at Thumbtack, that dream is now a reality.

Alyssa Place: (01:02)
Thumbtack connects customers with local service providers to help them tackle home improvement projects, house cleaning, dog training, and more than 500 other tasks clogging up the to-do list. On Thumbtack's own project list? Finding a way to help their more than 800 employees stretched across the globe hit the reset button when COVID hit. While the company's home base is in San Francisco, Thumbtack's team collaborated in offices across the U.S., Ontario, Canada, and Manila, the Philippines. The pandemic turned their workforce remote, and it's a choice they've adopted as a full-time policy. The teams work virtual first, with all employees worldwide clocking in from home full-time. As companies have gone back and forth on office reopenings and push back dates for a full return, Thumbtack was way ahead of the game. For Dionna Smith, head of diversity, equality and inclusion at Thumbtack, the timing could not have been better.

Dionna Smith: (01:58)
I joined Thumbtack October, 2020, so in the, the, the middle of all of this, and this was definitely a topic that we were discussing as we were looking at, like, what is the future of work look like specifically at Thumbtack. And being focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, obviously talking to a lot of our employees, um, at Thumbtack, once you could peel the onion back from just the not knowing what's going on in the world and all of the changes specifically around work, I found that underrepresented minorities, those that identify with a disability or as I called differently abled, women, a lot of times, I was actually getting really positive feedback about them being at home and their world's colliding wasn't such a bad thing for a lot of people.

Alyssa Place: (02:48)
Smith counts herself in that group, too. As a Black woman and working mom, Smith wanted a workplace that allowed her to bring her full self to work. That meant starting a new job after a summer of racial trauma rocked the country, while balancing the demands of her family, including a newborn baby. The convergence of home and work life was personal.

Dionna Smith: (03:07)
My son was born April, 2020. And I, I remember thinking when we were in the midst of 2020 with everything with COVID-19 and then everything with BLM and the murder of George Floyd, I had a baby, like how much more can we take? And when I was, you know, considering the opportunity in Thumbtack, I had fully expected that when we went back to the office, that I would be relocating to San Francisco. That was not an easy decision for me to come to. You know, I live in the Southeast, I'm in Atlanta, my parents, my family is here. So as I was thinking through all of these decisions for myself, and we started having the conversation of like, maybe we don't need to come back to the office because I have the best of both worlds. I can work for this company that I was very passionate about and so excited about where we were going, but that I would still be able to be near my aging parents and my children wouldn't have to change schools. And because of the stark difference in demographics between Atlanta and San Francisco, that's a whole other adjustment, not just for myself, but for my children also. So I did personally of course have a stake in a, there.

Alyssa Place: (04:15)
With a move off the table. Smith could focus on what she was hired to do at Thumbtack: build a diverse and inclusive culture in this new normal. And as she and her team worked to plan those next steps, it became clear that virtual first was actually helping their team grow and thrive.

Jelena Djordjevic is the vice president of people at Thumbtack, and says the conversations among leaders on the team started out as a puzzle, but then the pieces quickly fell into place.

Jelena Djordjevic: (04:43)
Going into the decision, which we really started tackling in October, so about five months into the pandemic, uh, what we were seeing is that we had encouraged employees to go to make decisions that worked for them during the pandemic. And about 20-30% of our employees had actually moved away to go live closer to family. And so it started off as more of a, a logistical exercise in terms of how many days a week in the office, how many offices should we have? How do you do the jigsaw puzzle of different locations? And we've realized that that was just the completely wrong approach. What we were actually talking about was how do we define our culture and our ways of working going forward? And so our future work strategy development process quickly became an exercise around deciding on our core cultural values and our vision for the employee experience and how we work at Thumbtack. And then through that, we were able to get to the design of what does this look like?

Alyssa Place: (05:33)
We'll hear how Thumbtack figured that out and the hurdles they faced along the way, right after this short break.

Welcome back to Perk Up where we chatting about remote work and how service provider platform Thumbtack is making this the way work gets done. But how do you take a company with a vibrant in-person culture and stick them behind computer screens, forever? Thumbtack VP of people Jelena Djordjevic says that once they were free from the limitations of the four walls of an office, could they really let their imaginations take over. What they discovered was that anything was possible.

Jelena Djordjevic: (06:11)
We found that it was actually a way more inclusive model of working because we didn't have this divide between the San Francisco headquarters and the Salt Lake office, and then the Manila office. They used to not be in the room for important decisions, but now we could all come together as equal participants in a conversation to make better decisions. And so it leveled the playing field where it didn't matter where you lived or what office you were in. Everybody was an equal participant. So that fundamentally inclusive nature was sort of this amazing a-ha that we had and really drove it

Alyssa Place: (06:42)
In her new role, Smith was on the front lines of making decisions that benefited her team while aligning that with Thumbtack's business goals and strategies. Virtual first has helped the entire staff crystallize what it really means to bring your whole self to work.

Dionna Smith: (06:56)
I was always a pro bringing your whole self to work, but nowhere near like I am now. This new world that we live in, where folks are seeing like, you know, my child running behind me or like seeing each other's homes. And I, I feel like even though we're not in person, we really are taking these interpersonal relationships to the next level. And so I think as an HR professional, where we're focused on people obviously, uh, but still very focused on business, sometimes it felt like the business and the people part would almost feel separate. It does not feel that way anymore. Um, in fact, it hasn't felt that way the entire time that I've, I've been at Thumbtack.

Alyssa Place: (07:36)
Can this really be the future of work? Facing the great resignation, an unprecedented labor shortage, women and working mothers leaving the workforce en masse, Smith says, instead of seeing these as roadblocks, they're opportunities.

Dionna Smith: (07:48)
From a recruiting standpoint, we are seeing a lot of positive opportunities. We've gone from recruiting basically locally in Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, looking for folks that were willing to relocate, it definitely affected our ability to attract a lot of diverse, especially ethnically diverse candidates. Now that that's out the way, we have seen a number of, again, just positive indicators. When we're looking at which cities we are heavily sourcing in, we are, we're able now to look at states and cities that have a higher diversity or demographics. We've also brought on two additional DEI folks that are focused on diversity recruitment in particular, and looking at our university recruiting. So partnering with Hispanic-serving institutions and HBCUs, which was tough for us before, because many of those schools, again, required folks to have to move, you know, pretty far from home.

Alyssa Place: (08:47)
Without geography getting in the way, Thumbtack's team can tap into talent from less tech-focused hubs. It's about building the best team and not just the team that can make it into the office, Djordjevic says.

Jelena Djordjevic: (08:59)
We used to have a deep in-office culture. Like you were in the office for, you know, nine to five. You didn't work from home on Fridays ever at Thumbtack. And so that really constrained people in terms of where they could live. Even within the Salt Lake, San Francisco, Manila area, you couldn't have too long of a commute, because the expectation was really, you were in the office during working hours. So in Q2, when we officially went virtual first, we saw that 40% of our new hires came from outside of California and Utah. Now in Q3, 60% of our new hires are coming from outside of California and Utah. And you're seeing populations that are really getting established across the country, whether it's in more technical markets like Washington state and Seattle, or if it's in other areas like Southern California, in Texas, in the Southeast, we've been really deliberate about expanding to new states, both by balancing what the business needs are and where are their functional talent pools that are really important to our business, but also in service of our DEI goals. I have two members of my team who live in LA for example, um, a person who's joining who lives in DC. And so that has allowed us to attract talent and provide access to opportunities that this talent otherwise would not have had. It's also allowed existing employees that we're trying to retain to go pursue these personal kind of passions and decisions.

Alyssa Place: (10:11)
But once those employees are through the virtual door, integrating them into a culture that everyone is still figuring out has been a challenge, but one with major rewards, Djordjevic says.

Jelena Djordjevic: (10:21)
So we are virtual first, but we couple that with a deep commitment to connection and that manifests several ways. It's really important that we invest in connection and community. And so over the last 18 months we've been doing that virtually through extensive virtual programming. Like our ERGs are at the core of community at Thumbtack. They really are the epicenter of engagement and connection that is kind of where people are hanging out, so to speak. I think that there's this notion that it's much harder to connect virtually, it's much harder to build a culture. I challenge that full heartedly. I have been amazed at the depth of connection that we have been able to foster.

Alyssa Place: (10:56)
The group help all employees, regardless of demographics connect in meaningful ways, Smith says

Dionna Smith: (11:03)
We have been able to really focus on our employee resource groups and really they are a major part of our overall engagement plan. You know, belonging and inclusivity has a whole new meaning. Now it's not just about those who are from, uh, marginalized groups or considered diverse. You know, we have to look at everything we do, on how do we make sure people feel like they belong when they're not walking in an office, when they're not seeing their coworkers every day.

Alyssa Place: (11:31)
Djordjevic and Smith say that while virtual first is the optimal way to make work work for all, it's still an important part of the Thumbtack culture to collaborate in person. That bonding doesn't happen without time and effort.

Jelena Djordjevic: (11:45)
There's so many people on my team or that I work with regularly that I have never once met. And I feel such a close relationship to them, but I think you have to work hard to get there. So you have to effectively onboard people. You have to integrate new team members through fun and robust team rituals. As a company, we will gather on an annual basis for Camp Thumbtack to really align around a shared sense of purpose, a shared mission, a shared identity. Thumbtack teams will gather quarterly for offsite. So the people team or the product development teams will come together to really deepen their ties so they can more effectively collaborate and have a lot of fun.

Alyssa Place: (12:23)
These meetups will help employees meet each other and change their perspective, in more ways than one.

Dionna Smith: (12:28)
I've been working with people for an entire year and have not met any of them. Right. And so, um, we're on Zoom all the time. So we made a joke the other day, I posted something on LinkedIn that was with my daughters for a post. And they're like, Oh my God, you have legs and a whole body, not just like on Zoom. And so though I haven't had the opportunity to do that yet, I'm really looking forward to whole teams getting together and meeting each other, some for the first time.

Alyssa Place: (12:56)
While Smith and Djordjevic have yet to meet in person, that hasn't stopped them from building a connection and a vision for what's next for Thumbtack. For both, it's pushing Thumbtack to embrace diversity and celebrate the humanity that comes with gathering people of different backgrounds toward a shared vision.

Jelena Djordjevic: (13:14)
We can engage with people we never would've encountered before. I chuckle every time I start an interview and I'm like, where are you based right now? And they'll say some crazy place. And it just, every time without fail, it hits me. I'm like, wow, we could not have actually had this conversation 18 months ago. So I think that has been amazing just of course it's like, there's sort of these benefits to the business to be able to recruit more broadly, but from a deeper perspective, being able to connect with people across the country, even across the world has been amazing. And now we realize the deep kind of humanity and sense of belonging that we valued at Thumbtack could actually manifest in a really different way as we solved for flexibility and allowing people to make personal decisions that really worked for them, but also ended up working for us as a business.

Dionna Smith: (13:55)
One of the things that was really, really tough for me at first was that, you know, I would be in meetings, I'd be doing webinars and I'd have a like kid coming, like climbing up on the back of my chair. I wouldn't even notice until I noticed him in the Zoom. And in the history of working like that's so unprofessional. It would just make me nervous because as a working mom and I've been a working mom, majority of my working life, is that I did have to separate that. I remember when I first started working and, and wanted to move up the ladder. I had a mentor tell me not to put a picture of my kids on the desk and make sure not to discuss that. And so to now go from that to during the, the course of 2020, having like my baby sitting my lap while I'm doing a training and moving through slides, I could have never imagined. I love it because like this is who I really am and I don't have to hide that part of me.

Alyssa Place: (14:51)
And that's our show today. Join us for next week's episode of Perk Up! to learn about why one CEO shuts her business down to encourage employees to take their PTO. This episode was produced by Employee Benefit News with audio production by Kellie Malone. Special thanks this week to Dionna Smith and Jelena Djordjevic from Thumbtack. Rate us and review us wherever you get your podcasts and check out more content from the EBN team at www.benefitnews.com.