 Now, it's my very great pleasure to introduce Lynn Oldham, Chief People Officer at Zoom. If any company had a front-row seat to view how the coronavirus pandemic affected culture, it was Zoom. In the space of a few weeks, their product became an indispensable part of our professional and personal lives. In fact, I'd like to take a moment to personally thank them for making it possible for me to see my family's faces over the past 16 months. Like many people leaders, Lynn must have had a very eventful year in 2020. Now she's here, and she'll tackle some of the biggest questions about remote work, such as, why did it take a pandemic to force companies to allow remote working? And now that we've discovered it's possible, how can we reimagine an inclusive, distributed workplace of the future? Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Lynn Oldham. I'm the Chief People Officer at Zoom Video Communications, and I'm here with you today to talk to you about, can we take the U-turn that we all did in the pandemic and help it help us reimagine work that works for everyone? And I want to thank Darren Murph for inviting me, who can say no to Mr. Murph. He is amazing, as is GitLab, so let's just get started. This is a little bit about me, but really what I want to say more importantly on this slide is, here's what I've been thinking about. Why did it take a pandemic to force companies to change their work habits? We've been working in HR for as many years as I have fingers and toes. And employers just have not embraced this concept of remote work. We've accommodated in certain circumstances with mountains of paperwork and lots of approvals, but it's been the exception and not the rule. So why? We're not afraid to lose inertia, not wanting to be the first mover, not wanting to lose control and ability to manage by walking around. Were they afraid to lose productivity and lose to the competition? Who knows? I'm sure it's all those reasons and even more. But the more important thing is now that we've been through this, we need to use to ensure that it's really proven that remote work can work. So how do we keep going? And so the next slide is all about the definition of tipping point, because I think we're there, people. I think we've reached the point at which the critical point in a situation, process or system, beyond which a significant and often unstoppable change takes place. And I think we're here. And why do we need to think about that? Why do we need to consider it? Because we need to think about how do we take this big leap we all just made forward and keep leaping and not stay stagnant. We've been stagnant for 20 plus years in the way we work. And we've proved it's archaic and it can work differently. Why do we want to do this? Because we'll have happier employees who will be engaged in our future. Because why? Because we listen to them and we created work that works for everyone. All right. So quick commercial for Flexwork. Flexwork is a group of people. I joined up with my friends at Box, Jessica, Leanne at Palo Alto Networks, Nikki at Uber, and Kristen at Splunk. And we formed this consortium of thought leaders. And I wouldn't even call us thought leaders because we don't have all the answers. We really want you to join up with us and talk about the ideas that you're putting forward, the things that you're working on, what works, what doesn't work. The most important thing this group came together to say is we don't want to go back to work like we were working in March of last year or February of last year. We want to do something different. We want to make this pandemic count for something other than the horrible things that it's counted for. The most important thing of our philosophy is that we want to put the employee at the center and build everything around the employee. So if you're interested, there's a website here. Feel free. If you put your name and email in there, you'll get an occasional email from me or one of my cohorts talking about different opportunities for you to connect with us. So we'd love to hear from you. All right. So this big U-turn has become a symbol of where I want us to think about going. On March the 4th. Well, let me start with Zoom was no different than anybody else here except maybe get let accept GitLab before the pandemic. We had 85% of our workforce in an office and about 15% of our workforce was remote. Nothing in between. And essentially March the 4th, if you if you're from California, the geography is you take the 101 from San Jose to San Francisco. I'm on my way up to a meeting in San Francisco and I get that call and that call goes back and forth around working from home and keeping our employees safe. And when can we do it? And I'm like, OK, you know, let's plan. Let's make a plan. Maybe we can go next week, but we need to plan. No, no, let's let's do it today. We really need to do it today very, very much in Zoom fashion. Let's do it today. So we did it. And I made a big U turn on the 101 safely, of course, and within all legal parameters. And I turned around and came back and pulled into the parking garage just in time to see a brigade of employees coming at me with their their office chairs piled high with their equipment that they would need to work from home and be productive. So that was the symbolism that I'm taking forward for looking and examining everything that we do from the employee perspective out and how we need to turn it around and make it work for everyone. So that's the beginning. And let me talk to you about what we're seeing out there. So this slide shows a number of pieces that I found out in the in the ether around what predictions are there via survey. It's everywhere from 39 percent to 74 percent of our surveying is saying that flexible working is the new currency for attracting and retaining top talent because employees are willing to change jobs in the current economic environment. That is the game changer. Companies who want to keep the best people now and in the next normal are going to have to put flex work front and center in their talent strategy. People have found that they're satisfied with their job. Their productivity is up to pre pandemic levels. Remote and hybrid have allowed them to have a better work life balance or integration. Working remotely is attractive because it reduces commute commute time. It gives people the most flexibility they've ever had in their personal lives. And those benefits are appreciated and have been appreciated during the pandemic by everyone from parents to people with elderly parents. And let's face it, for some, the office is a big distraction. Every survey I've done, every survey I've seen shows very few people wanting to be full time in the office. Other side effects of being remote. Think about expensive urban areas like San Francisco. You can expand your talent pool and not worry about having your employees live hand to mouth because of high rent, high cost of living. One employee I got a call from, he was hired for a job in Denver. And he had not moved from his hometown because the pandemic hit. So he was living in his parents' basement. And he was like, he just took the camera around. So you see, I'm in the basement. But I've met someone and I have friends here and I found a house down the street. I want to buy and I don't want to go to Denver anymore. So those are the kind of things that are happening all around that people are coming to the realization that they want a different kind of life post pandemic and quality of life is important. One of our employees, Harry, he was, I think it was May of last year. We were two months into the pandemic. And he said, Lynn, I have had more meals with Rachel, his wife. In the last two months that I've had with her in all of the last five years. Harry was obviously a big traveler and he didn't have the time to do those things and have simple things like meals with his family. Then there's the next slide, which is some of the other stuff that's out in the ether. And you can see that managers already are on the fence. It's greater than 50% are unsure or agree with the statement that they're less productive. So these are the type of things that over time could push employers to lean toward going back to the way it was. You've also seen some famous CEOs out there say things like only the least engaged employees want to work from home. Another one said employees who work from home have less hustle. So those are the kind of things that are out there also in the ether. And it's interesting to see how that will play in the minds of managers and leaders on how this will all shake out. Now my good friend Adam Grant, it's like he knew he put this post on LinkedIn recently and it's so perfect for what I'm talking about because for me it's clear that employers who want people in the office and will also want to attract, engage and retain the best talent will face a dilemma. Many of our best employees will prefer maximum flexibility to work where they choose, when they choose. So those employees will favor employers who want to offer flexibility and requiring people to be in the office five days a week, maybe a deal breaker. So similar to Adam, I feel like smart forward thinking companies know, they know that they're in a stealth war for talent in this post pandemic return to work environment. And they're going to have to do and manage the great reset in a way that will make their leaders shine because they don't want their leaders to fall by the wayside or their companies to fall by the wayside. So let's talk about what was really working well in the pandemic. There's certainly a lot of things to point to. I'll point to three. The first one is around hiring. When the pandemic hit, Zoom became and we like to say an essential service, really making sure not only your companies could connect, but also grandparents, teachers, churches, you name it. And that put a strain on the system, not in a bad way because our tools are cloud based. So very scalable. We still need the people behind the tool, right? And so we had to staff up quickly. And Zoom became our hiring process just like our employees became 100% virtual overnight. And to date, about 50% of our employees have never seen an office. Pre-pandemic, we were 2,400. We came out with our analysts call a week or so ago and we were 5,000 plus employees. So we were moving at a pace of about 150 to 200 employees added on each month. And what was really important was that we could access a wider array of talent. We didn't have to just look in our backyard. We weren't tied to a geographic location. There's a research study out there that shows that applicants who live five or six miles away from a location got one third fewer callbacks. So now that's all bets are off, no location ties. And what does that do for us? It also gives us access to more diverse talent. And unfortunately, when a local talent pool isn't particularly diverse, you're stuck with it in some way, shape or form, unless you're moving people to you. So some place like San Francisco, where a lot of tech companies are, their city population of blacks is 5.2% when the national average is 13.4. So obviously, if you are looking only in San Francisco proper, you're not going to be at the same numbers as the national average, which is sad. The other thing is for differently abled people and one in four Americans are living with a disability. And that makes the office sometimes, depending on the disability, a daunting predicament. So opening your aperture to candidates also gives you access to people who wouldn't normally want to come to an office for that reason. Think about our LGBTQ friends as well. I saw a stat where it said one in five coworkers are told or implied that they should dress more feminine or masculinely in the office. And to me, that's incredible and who wants to face that every day, right? So in some way, shape or form, home slash remote can be a place of psychological safety, where employees don't have to stress about things like, which bathroom do I use? Or what's that guy going to say to me next? And remote options can alleviate many of these issues, allowing talent acquisition to cast that wider net and identify candidates that we just never thought about before. And that's really exciting. And I want to keep that. So that's number one. Two. Two is all about onboarding. So daunting these days, especially because, like I said, 50% of our workforce has never seen an office. And what did it look like before? We bring in people for a week long extravaganza to do the whole dog and pony. So it was the travel, the hotel, the, you know, bringing people from the other side of the world who were exhausted and jet lag for part of the time. And, you know, you know that your absorption for training just goes down by Thursday or Friday. I'm not sure anybody heard anything we said. So with this opportunity to be virtual, we also decided to turn onboarding on its ear. And what we did, and this study, by the way, can be seen on that flexwork.life site. We took it apart and put it back together again and made day one all about the culture. So we wanted to live and perpetuate our care value because that's a business imperative for us. And we needed assurance that every single new Zoomie was deeply connected to those values before we unleashed them on the rest of the organization. And so what we did was really do an emotive day, a day where we were focusing not on logistics, not on benefits, not on product, but using our product, using our technology, like breakout rooms and polling and annotations to talk through culture. And things like when was the last time you delivered happiness and how did that feel? And what did that look like? And that's really how it changed. And what was really exciting about it was that it really did connect new hires to our culture, our values, our brand, and community by allowing them to experience firsthand our culture as opposed to just hear about it, right? We had a customer stories that embodied the essence of keeping the world connected and delivering happiness. And it was just, it just reduced the new employee anxiety fears. We leveraged the platform without teaching the product, and it was just a great inclusive environment. And we do it every Monday. And we found that emotion is key, more fun equals more learning, and travel is not required. So again, we want to keep that because we think that, particularly as a quote here, culture does not live in your walls. It lives in your people. So starting from there is really what's going to perpetuate culture. Okay. And then the third thing that I want to keep, because it's just an amazing thing that we've learned during this time frame, is this equality of head size. For the first time, everyone has an equal space in the meeting. Regardless of age, background, gender, level, etc. The size of your picture is equal to everyone else. And your location in the meeting is random. There's no best seat in the house anymore. Independent of who you are, you have more control in a meeting. You turn on and off your camera, on and off your microphone. You can chat. Ever been in a meeting when everyone differs to the person at the head of the table, or where the junior staff have to sit to the outside of the room, because there aren't enough seats at the table. When I started, I went to our first E-staff meeting, and it was exciting. We all sat around this big boatscape table, and down the end were the big screens with the people who were not in San Jose. And so exciting, interesting, but I noticed that we were one picture on the screen, and then there were these other heads of people elsewhere. And it was, at the moment, didn't think too much about it, and then I traveled for business. And I joined that same meeting in a different way. I was on the screen at the end of the wall, where everybody else was around the boatscape table, and I knew my big head was in the room, but I didn't feel like I was in the room in the same way. I couldn't see anybody's faces that were in the big picture because there were so many people around the table, and it was so far away. So I really did, once we got here, appreciate the fact that I could see everybody's expression on their faces as I'm speaking, or as someone else is speaking. It was awesome, and I don't want to give that up. Now, shameless plug for Zoom. We are having a product come out called Smart Gallery, that once we've got people in a hybrid situation or a flexible work arrangement, you can outfit your conference room so that everybody looks the same on the screen. There will still be a few people in a room, so dynamics-wise, you're going to really have to manage that, but you will experience the meeting as a remote person the same way you've always experienced it, which is kind of cool, right? So I want to take that equality back to an in-person work setting, but that's going to be challenging. And again, there'll be products, but at the end of the day, there's a lot of other dynamics we're going to have to manage. Everyone can be heard, seen, and given the same chance to interact, and if we don't wish to say anything or speak up, you can always chat. So that is something that I absolutely want to keep in the new environment after COVID recedes. So how do we keep those things? So my question to you, what things have you done in your companies that you hope to keep alive? And how will you do that in a post-pandemic world? I think for sure, technology will be key. No question, but leadership buy-in is essential. A friend of mine a couple of months ago said to me, she was the head of people at a Fortune 100 company, she said to me, whether it works or it doesn't, Lynn is going to largely be dependent on the CEO mindset. And I don't think she's wrong. I do think though that we have the ability to impact that. And if our leadership is game, or at least leading toward game, we need to help them. We need to help them because we have an approaching global skilled talent shortage. And if our managers and leaders aren't all rowing in the same direction, we're going to have some issues in the talent acquisition space and retention and engagement. And change management is going to be key for us. There's no one size fits all after this is over. I recognize that the right hybrid work model is going to be right for you, not right for me necessarily. But I think it's best that we're surveying our employees. So we're asking them, we're doing focus groups, we're digging in. We're asking them what works for them, what doesn't, how does that feel? Because we have to create what's right for our org based on putting our ear to the ground and really listening. If you look at this next slide, I heard this somewhere and I thought it was a really good way to think about it. Marketing, when they do their thing, they're thinking about personas and how to market to this persona versus that persona. For those of you are marketing to business, you might think about the enterprise business versus the small business and you're going to market differently. So this person that I took this from, which I think again was fabulous, is thinking about the post pandemic work world in the form of personas. So the orange here is the person who wants to work in the office. By all measures, by all surveys I've done, by even things I've done on LinkedIn, this is going to be single digit percentages, but it still exists. Then there's the blue box, remote. We had them before, we'll have them again, people who don't want to set foot in an office. And then the green box is what I think is going to come out of this. And I think it's the lion's share of employees. I did a LinkedIn poll, not my employees, but a LinkedIn poll and I think I'm at 72% of the folks thus far are interested in this green box. And this green box is going to require some thought and making sure that the way we work, that we can think about all of the aspects of work through the eyes of someone who's flexible. And then the last one in the purple is what they call borderless, I would call digital nomads, someone who can work in any time zone, work when night, morning, with less boundaries. And I guess to ensure and retain equality, we need to look at every aspect of the relationship with each persona and how we touch them, including the little things so that we can retain equity. So for example, let's think about it, buying lunch, some of you buy lunch for your employees who come to the office. How might you think about that across all these personas? Is that something you want to do? It's just one aspect, it's a simple one, but it's something that we need to think about along with everything else that we're thinking about. Another idea that I heard is tracking promotions, tracking promotions to ensure that we're not just promoting the people in the orange box. I like that idea and I think that that's something that will do going forward. Another one is, and I'm sure GitLab does this, is where you have clusters of folks in one geo, whether they're across departments or not, give them resources so they can get together from time to time. You will silo bust like nobody's business and you'll promote team and culture. And I think that would be an interesting idea given this idea that anybody can work from anywhere. Forward thinking companies will close the gap on how they design their people-centric experiences, giving employees and each persona the space they need to unlock their full potential and deliver transformative results for the company. The last slide here is really around change management and how do you ensure that you're on your change journey? Where are you on your change journey? How will you drive the conversations? Companies have already adjusted to greater workplace flexibility as a result of the pandemic, right? Now they need to lean in and proactively address workforce preferences in order to attract and retain that top talent. There was a professor, Anthony Klotz, he's from Texas A&M and apparently he studied thousands or hundreds of exits of workers and he said recently that the great resignation is coming. He said that when there's uncertainty, people tend to stay put, hunker down. And then there are all these pent-up resignations that didn't happen in 2020. So now the numbers are multiplied, he's saying, because people have had pandemic-related epiphanies, remote work, about passion projects, about family time, hell, about life and death. And what that means is that people are going to turn their back on the nine to five office grind. So don't wait to start planning and preparing for COVID to recede. Plan with your employees in mind. Ask them what they want. Pick the practices that worked really well during the pandemic and take them forward. Adapt your human capital practices to different personas now that you now have a new workforce and you will in the future. You won't experience a talent drain if you shift from a workplace-focused mentality to a worker-focused mindset. The story of the press is telling, all those things you saw in the ether, that doesn't have to be the outcome. We don't know what's going to happen, but we know that it'll be up to us. We are the critical actors in the U-turn story. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Darren Murph. Thank you, GitLab. I've really enjoyed it. Have a good day.