Photo Courtesy : MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images
A picture shows the logo of online lodging service Airbnb displayed on a computer screen in the Airbnb offices in Paris on April 21, 2015.
After Airbnb announced last Thursday that its 5,000 employees worldwide would be able to work and live anywhere, its career page was flooded with applicants.
Airbnb’s CEO and founder, Brian Chesky, announced the plan in an email to employees, saying “We want to hire and retain the best people in the world (like you). If we limited our talent pool to a commuting radius around our offices, we would be at a significant disadvantage. The best people live everywhere, not concentrated in one area. And by recruiting from a diverse set of communities, we will become a more diverse company.”
He added that the vast majority of Airbnb employees would be able to work wherever they are the “most productive.” According to the memo, employees who work in their home countries will not lose compensation.
Airbnb employees may also work overseas for up to 90 days a year, although they must still have a permanent address for tax and payroll purposes. The company hopes to “open-source” a solution to its tax, payroll, and time zone problems, he said.
According to a press release by Business Insider, The response internally was great, but even more impressive [was] the response externally because Airbnb’s career page was visited 800,000 times after that announcement.
The company’s new work-from-anywhere benefit came after two years of remote work for much of the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chesky said in the earnings call that the pandemic spurred longer-term stays at properties listed on its platform. Long-term stays of 28 days or more remained Airbnb’s fastest-growing category by trip length compared to 2019, the company said in its letter to shareholders. They accounted for one-fifth of nights booked in the first quarter, per the document.
In the mail, Chesky also mentioned that a huge number of individuals don’t wish to return to an office five days every week. Furthermore, most organizations are not expecting workers to return to an office. Although he does feel that “A small number of roles will be required to be in the office or a specific location to perform their core job responsibilities”.
He went on to add “I don’t think this is a temporary phenomenon. I think that the genie’s out of the bottle, and flexibility is here to stay.”
A recap of Airbnb’s design for living and working anywhere:
- Airbnb employees can work either from home or the office
- Employees can move anywhere within the country they work in and their compensation won’t change
- They would also have the flexibility to travel and work around the world
- The Airbnb team would meet up regularly for gatherings
- The entire team would continue to work in a highly coordinated way
