Why Yelp chose to shutter its offices while others opened them

A number of employers have announced efforts to bring workers back to the office in recent months, but Yelp has run in the opposite direction. In late July, the online review company closed three of its offices in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., and officially went virtual-first. Carmen Orr, Yelp’s chief people officer, joined the company in January, just months before its global shift to remote work. For today’s Friday spotlight, Orr shares what she and her team have learned in the months since and the systems they’re putting in place to ensure sustained success.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Fortune: One of the biggest challenges in setting a remote-first policy is negotiating the wants and needs of the CEO. How did you collaborate with Yelp’s chief executive, Jeremy Stoppelman, on the decision to close offices? 

When I think about the idea of being “on the same page,” I think that starts with the company’s values. During my interview process, it was clear that the entire leadership team at Yelp was mission-oriented. One thing that stands out is an early conversation I had with Jeremy where we talked about Yelp’s values, specifically our value to be “unboring” and what that means when we think about our culture and Yelp’s willingness to do uncommon things like challenging long-held paradigms for what makes the workplace effective. 

Though it may not be the case for every organization, our entire executive team was in agreement about the benefits of remote work. In fact, in surveying our employees, 86% of respondents said they’d prefer to work remotely most or all of the time, 87% reported that working remotely made them more effective at work, and 93% of employees and their managers said they can meet their goals remotely. 

As we looked at the data, there was really no question that embracing remote work was good for our employees and our company, and Jeremy has continued to advocate for remote work due to the great benefits we’ve seen. 

It’s been just over a month since Yelp closed three of its offices. What were some of the biggest learnings in the first month?

While we recently decided to further reduce our office footprint, we’ve been on this journey for two years. Prior to the pandemic, 90% of Yelp’s workforce was in the U.S. and heavily concentrated around our offices. Fast forward to now and we have employees in all 50 states, with 20% working globally. The offices we closed saw a weekly average utilization of less than 2% of available workspaces. 

This is a journey, and we’re iterating on what’s going well and taking feedback from our employees on what we could do better to support them. It’s also really important that we realize we’re building new skills, and we need to be intentional in how we create connections, upskill leaders, and empower employees to develop connections virtually as well as create boundaries around work and life. 

What were the most delightful findings?

Speaking of my own experience, I interviewed and onboarded completely remotely and can say I was delighted by how quickly relationships can be built. We’re also consistently seeing that our employees feel like their feedback matters and that they continue to be satisfied working remotely because they can spend the precious time they would have otherwise spent commuting doing the things they love with the people who mean most to them. Happiness research and our internal data back this up, with 87% of employees stating that they feel favorable about remote work and 93% reporting that their managers are able to create inclusive environments remotely. 

What KPIs will you continue to monitor to ensure remote-first work is successful?

We’re going to continue to be curious, ask questions, and apply feedback as we advance our new work model. There are a lot of things we’re doing well, but we’re going to continue our deliberate focus on the success of our remote-first approach to work. For example, right now we’re reviewing the results of our employee benefits survey and looking at how we continue to evolve our benefits program to best support our remote teams. We’ll continue to monitor engagement through our employee listening strategy, as well as overall business results.

What initiatives have you and your team put in place to maintain emotional connection and engagement? 

There is a great body of research by Gartner that I often turn to when I think about connectedness and engagement at work. We’re focused on maintaining what’s been core to Yelp and what makes us special but also realize we need to evolve as we work to build emotional proximity regardless of location. We’re looking at skill sets differently and focused on building skills that leaders in a remote environment need. It’s critical that our employees feel seen and cared for, as well as empowered to have a meaningful career at Yelp.

Not only do our employees and their managers regularly report that they can meet their goals remotely, our strong financial results also demonstrate how productive we are in a remote work environment.

In other CHRO Daily news, Fortune will be taking a break on Monday to observe Labor Day. The newsletter will be back in your inbox on Tuesday. Have a great weekend!

Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton

Reporter's Notebook

The most compelling data, quotes and insights from the field.

Though more companies have at least figured out how to approach diversity and inclusion, equity appears to fall on the back burner at times. Earlier this week, I spoke with Karyn Twaronite, EY’s global vice chair of diversity, equity and inclusiveness, about why that is. 

“It's a segment of the work that companies don't talk about. It’s not because they don't want to, it's just very vast. And it means that you have to tackle systems and barriers and things that you didn't intend to exist—but they do exist—and power dynamics. So that's why it's different than tackling representation where you either have it or you don't.”

Around the Table

- Two startup cofounders couldn’t stop arguing. So they went to couples therapy. Some executives think therapy could be a new tool for conflict resolution at work. Protocol

- The unprecedented number of newly hired employees in the workforce could be why various industries now have such poor service. But despite some obvious growing pains, experts believe things will smooth out. Wall Street Journal

- Shopify is monitoring its employees' conversations on Slack with volunteer “channel champions,” meant to keep channels focused only on work-related conversations. Business Insider

- Employees at the architecture firm Bernheimer Architecture announced they had unionized, becoming the sector’s first union at a private company. New York Times

- A recent study found female managers make fairer pay decisions than male colleagues. When given the chance to choose between paying money out to their employees or keeping it for themselves, women offered 13% more money to their employees than men did. Bloomberg

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Fortune. 

Lying flat. Before “quiet quitting” went viral on TikTok, there was a Chinese trend called “lying flat” that espoused a similar deprioritization of one’s job. Lying flat originated with Luo Huazhong, a factory worker, who eventually quit his job to cycle across China. His social media posts gained so much attention that they were eventually censored by the Chinese government. —Grady McGregor

Mental health is wealth. Employers that invested in mental health services saw a 4x return on their investment, writes Fortune’s Trey Williams. Nearly 60% of companies are openly talking about mental health at work, and when companies broach the subject with employees, it makes workers open up about their mental health needs. —Trey Williams

Reporting for duty. The CEO of the Washington Post blamed the newspaper’s poor financial performance this year on the fact that few employees have returned to the office, requesting call logs for Zoom meetings to see where employees are dialing in. —Jane Thier

Free food for everyone. British retailer John Lewis, which owns the eponymous department store and a chain of upscale supermarkets, will offer all of its 80,000 employees free meals while on the clock. It's an effort to support workers during a period of record inflation in the U.K. The policy will include everyone from frontline retail workers to the truck drivers that deliver goods to the stores. —Chloe Taylor