Innovation #3 Airbnb office is just like home

The Airbnb headquarters in San Francisco / Courtesy of Airbnb

• Published Mar 12, 2017 5:00 PM KST
• Updated Mar 12, 2017 5:00 PM KST

This is third in a series of articles on companies with innovative work cultures. — ED.

Airbnb employees work at home-like environment as hosts

By Yun Suh-young

Every day, you wake up in the morning, get ready to go to work and take the bus, drive your car, or take a taxi to get to your office. You walk a little up or down the hills of Gyeongridan street and reach a small house with no sign post in front of it. In you enter, and this little house is where you begin your work day.

Just as Airbnb Korea employees work in a real house, this "home-to-home" transit is, in fact, what Airbnb employees go through every day across the world.

Home sharing service Airbnb's workplaces are in and of themselves "homes" or designed to look like an interior of a home. As much as the external environment speaks for itself as a symbol of the service it provides, the homey environment is also something the company hopes to provide internally to its employees so they would feel like they were working at home, where they feel most comfortable.

And in this home, they expect their employees to be "hosts," much like the hosts who are registered on its service as home providers.

Be a host

"Be a host" is the first of the four corporate values Airbnb promotes _ the other three are "embrace the adventure," "be a cereal entrepreneur," and "champion the mission."

"Think of it as inviting a guest to your house. You try to anticipate the needs of your guest. You become considerate of the person in front of you, instead of yourself. You try to empathize with the person. That's how Airbnb employees are expected to be to our clients and to each other," said Patrick Lee, Korea Country Manager, in an interview with The Korea Times.

"The reason why you like being at home is because it's comfortable and because you can be yourself. You don't have to be formal or pretentious. I think our members can be comfortable with the environment and with each other in this home-like space. And when you can be yourself, I believe you can expect the best results."

It is this comfortable environment that allows members to speak to each other more openly, he says.

"Empathy is really important within our company. So being a host means being empathetic. You become empathetic through communication. I think we're all very comfortable and open with each other, which is what makes the work culture of Airbnb Korea special," said Lee.

"When you try to hide your weaknesses, you start building walls and grow uncomfortable with each other. I've witnessed this vicious cycle throughout my career. So here, I encourage people to share their vulnerability and open up which is why we grew comfortable with each other."

To create the best synergy, Airbnb Korea doesn't have designated seats.

"When you're divided by function, you tend to focus on your own field of work. When you sit next to people who work in a completely different field, you can broaden your perspective. The most efficient way of working could be division by function, but the greatest synergy comes from collaboration," he said.

Unlike many companies that claim to be human-centered in their services but not with their internal environment, Airbnb is exemplary of a company that is human-centered to the core.

"If Google is a tech-based, process-driven company, Airbnb is a design-thinking based company with a focus on humans. What people think and feel are more important than the process itself,” said Lee, who had worked at Google prior to joining Airbnb.

“What I found surprising here was that they state the vision and core values explicitly and these values are reflected in day to day activities.

"I have worked at many companies but usually when companies talk about work culture, they think of it separately to business operation. They didn't connect it to business performance. This was the first company that really believed work culture influenced business performance and screwing up the work culture could also screw up the business and doing financially well was meaningless without a good work culture."

Airbnb culture

What intrigued Lee Ji-hyon, ground control manager of Airbnb Korea, when she applied for the job was that the company asked for specific instances of how she showed empathy.

"'What did you recently do for your colleague?' or 'What can you do for this person in this situation?' were some interesting questions asked on the application," she said.

Other than being host-like, employees should be adventurous, entrepreneurial and mission-driven.

"Internally we say the worst case is when you fail but there's no learning coming from that experience. We encourage people to take challenges and learn. We try to change the traditional system where only seniors make decisions. So we give full autonomy to newcomers and juniors," said Patrick Lee.

Lee, the ground control manager, said she appreciated how managers take action when suggestions are made.

"Employees speak up a lot and are free to talk about anything. Even if it may seem like a ridiculous idea in a corporate-world perspective, the managers hear it out and take action," she said.

The company expects employees to be "cereal entrepreneurs" just like the founders who designed cereal boxes with images of Obama and McCain as a marketing idea to raise money to keep their business going.

"The strongest engagement comes from voluntary action," says country manager Lee. "You can learn so much more and capture bigger opportunities when you think this is your own business."

Even benefits provided by the company are sometimes designed by the employees themselves. The "Work Like a Human" program offering various educational or health programs for employees is developed by global office "ambassadors."

Don't f*** up the culture

Airbnb is one of the few companies that really focuses on maintaining a good work culture.

"Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with passion," wrote Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, on Medium, sharing an anecdote about what made them care so much about keeping the culture healthy.

In 2012, while showing Peter Thiel, one of Airbnb's investors, around their office after closing a $150 million Series C funding, Chesky asked him for his single most important advice. Thiel replied, “Don’t f*** up the culture." Their bright, positive, entrepreneurial culture was one of the reasons he invested in them.

Inspired by this comment, the three Airbnb co-founders have since put great effort in preserving, improving and expanding their 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," said Chesky.

"The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial. And if we have a company that is entrepreneurial in spirit, we will be able to take our next '(wo)man on the moon' leap."

This emphasis on culture was what shocked and inspired Airbnb's country manager when he attended a recent internal employee gathering in San Francisco last year.

"When companies hold business events, they're usually presentation-oriented. But for those the three days we were there to participate in the global Airbnb gathering, most of the time was dedicated to talking about work culture. I was surprised that they would gather all these people to talk about this theme and how much it was important to this company. Airbnb is committed to keeping its culture for years to come even as the business expands," said Lee.

"Because they believe so deeply in work culture, I came to realize its importance as well. It's not a tool to create better results, but an end goal of itself."