: Twitter Isn’t Stopping at Hybrid Working. Here’s How Tech Firms Like Ours Can Evolve Beyond the Workplace #WorldNEWS The global pandemic has had a profound impact on many parts of our lives, and

Twitter Isn’t Stopping at Hybrid Working. Here’s How Tech Firms Like Ours Can Evolve Beyond the Workplace #WorldNEWS
The global pandemic has had a profound impact on many parts of our lives, and the way we work is no exception, propelling us into a new way of working that has altered our long-standing practices from the past several decades. We have forever left behind the requirement to show up in an office every day, to work pre-set contiguous hours like a 9-to-5 schedule, and to commute long distances in order to work in person with colleagues while still being able to live in the neighborhoods that fit our lifestyle, budget, school choice, and other personal preferences.
At Twitter, our journey away from these ways of working began a few years before the pandemic. We started exploring flexibility in work styles and locations in late 2017, believing it would help us attract and retain the talent we needed to grow by letting people choose where and how they work.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=true]
On January 9, 2018, our CEO, Jack Dorsey, sent an email that read in part:
Unrelated but important: I decided to work from home today. I’m going to do this every Tuesday. I got a lot done, and felt more focused and creative. We should always optimize for where people feel their most creative, and I’d love to see us be a lot more flexible about working from home. As long as people are setting the right expectations with their colleagues, communicating progress and blockers, and getting their work done, all good.
My inbox was immediately flooded with questions from employees and managers about this new ‘mandate’ from our CEO. We didn’t actually have any new policies or programs ready since it was still in early stages, but suddenly, flexible work was the top priority for our team.
Although I never asked him about it, by sending that email, I think Jack was actually making a point to accelerate this transition. It was clear based on employees’ reactions that they were eager to have more flexibility about where and how they worked. I knew we had a long road ahead of us to change our office-centric culture and long-standing mindsets and behaviors, but changing now was going to be critical to our future success and durability as a company.
We started piloting a Flexible Work Program shortly after Jack’s email and stood up a cross-functional team to explore the different aspects of creating a more distributed workforce that would offer more choice and flexibility to our employees. We launched training courses for managers on how to lead teams working in new ways, and provided a slew of resources, like guides for setting up home offices, and how to work effectively across time zones and locations to support these new ways of working.