On Monday, June 7th, we brought three fantastic speakers from Coinbase, Tide, and MyHeritage to talk about the changing office landscape. Each speaker shared their companies’ respective push to hybrid work over a one-hour panel, moderated by myself, Amy Yin. Awesome collaboration with the Corenet PropTech committee in NY!
Three takeaways from the panel!
- The Google Effect is losing its grip on Silicon Valley–the best companies will bake intentionality into their workplace. Free snacks and perks aren’t enough to keep employees happy and coming to the office.
- There is a wide range of hybrid working. Companies are making a big bet that hybrid leads to higher engagement and talent retention.
- Technology companies are concerned about creating an equitable remote vs office experience. Offsite and travel budgets are growing because an in-person element to work is still important to the hybrid experience, even if the in-person element is no longer at the office.
Some other tips brought up by speakers:
- Coinbase is planning to elect event captains for regions to have localized programming. They will be emphasizing speaker series, museum visits, and bonding events OUTSIDE the offices to create an equitable in-office versus remote experience. This is important to their remote-first mantra.
- MyHeritage is in Israel and is operating in the post-vaccinated world. They are seeing excitement and buzz about being in the office…ONE to TWO days per week. They have designated team days (which they manage in OfficeTogether’s desk booking software) and then folks can choose to come in the office freely beyond that.
- Tide has a Work from Outside the Office policy where flexibility is key! They signed an office lease right before the pandemic struck so will be keeping their large space and replacing desks with soft seating and collaboration zones.
- Coinbase has rebranded their Workplace Ops team to Employee Experience since where you work may no longer be a place maintained by Coinbase! And they are partnering heavily with WeWork for more flexible lease terms and to spin up more offices in more cities but decrease square footage in San Francisco. This is a larger trend in leasing–it’s a tenant’s market and flexible, shorter-term leases are becoming more and more common.
- One of Tide’s favorite tools during the pandemic has been Lattice, which does performance review and employee pulses.
Great discussion with three powerful women thinking about the future of work! Thanks to everyone who participated.
Please find speaker bios below:
Liza Haskell – Tide
Liza Haskell is Chief Administrative Officer at the UK’s leading business banking platform, Tide. She joined Tide in 2019 as General Counsel from San Francisco, where she had been Head of Legal at a leading tech start-up, Gusto.
Liza made an immediate impact at Tide, with her strong work ethic and passion for making the business better in every way. Straight after taking maternity leave, Liza stepped into the temporary role of VP of People and Culture, alongside her existing role, and was then quickly promoted to the executive team as Chief Administrative Officer, with responsibility for Tide’s global People and Culture and legal teams.
Dominique Baillet – Coinbase
Dominique Baillet leads the execution of Coinbase’s remote-first policy, running the Employee Experience and Workplace Ops team. She brings strategic, product development orientation to organizational development. She is responsible for enabling a best-in-class employee experience – which is diverse, inclusive, global, and remote – as a strategic differentiator to attract and retain top talent who are on the bleeding edge of innovation creating a new financial system. Dominique has a BA from Brown University and received her MBA from Harvard Business School.
Katerina Breitman – MyHeritage
Katerina is the Facilities Manager at MyHeritage, and has extensive experience in both the service and hi-tech industries. Her specialties include operational management, procurement, facilities management, real estate contracts, oversight of insurance processes, and leasing. Katerina has a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy, Semitic languages, and Religious Studies from St. Petersburg State University.
Amy Yin – Moderator
Amy is the CEO of OfficeTogether, which provides scheduling and management software for a hybrid model of working. Previously she was an engineer and engineering manager at Coinbase and was also an engineer for Facebook and Hired.com. She founded the Harvard Women in Computer Science and graduated with honors with a computer science degree from Harvard College. She lives in San Francisco with her two cats Catherine and Scratches.
Brigitte Beltran – Organizer, Space Matrix
Brigitte is head of the Proptech Committee for Corenet in NY. Full-time, she is Head of International Client Solutions for Space Matrix, digital design-build consultancy.
