Box: At the Forefront of Hybrid Work

November 29th 2021 | Jessica Swank, Chief People Officer at Box

2020 was a year for the history books, and in 2021 and beyond, things are still ever-changing. Throughout this unprecedented time, helping our Boxers stay safe, engaged, AND productive has been a top priority for us. Let me walk you through how we are approaching this today and how we’re making it happen.

Our Hybrid Philosophy

Box has adopted a hybrid work environment, where flexible, virtual, and office-based work combine to create opportunity for our Boxers, speed and agility for our customers, and increased impact on our communities. For those that live near Box hubs (centralized office locations in Redwood City, San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, New York City, London, Warsaw and Tokyo), we have built working environments to best maximize our in-person work and collaboration. At the same time, we want to maximize the benefit from the flexibility that we've seen over the past year, even for those Boxers that live near a Box office.

While we’re excited to rejoice in offices, we have Boxers all over the world in various working landscapes:

Hybrid – Any Boxer who chooses to rejoin our office environments and allowing for a location-flexible arrangement when needed. This is our combo model of both onsite and offsite work.
Fully remote – Boxers who are fully remote in locations across the globe and are a part of distributed teams (can be a team mixed with both remote Boxers and hybrid or in-office Boxers).
In-office – Boxers essential to office settings that will be rejoining us full-time in office and hub locations globally.

Work From (Almost) Anywhere

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we closed offices and moved to a virtual, remote-first environment quickly. To enable Boxers to set up a home office, we offered two stipends to set up their home working environments, with more than 97% of global Boxers taking advantage of one or both of these for desks, monitors, chairs, and more. We also introduced a Work from Anywhere (WFA) program that allowed Boxers to move and work from any location (where Box was legally set up) either temporarily or longer-term, have been able to make interim life choices during a very tumultuous time.

Staying Connected

For both remote and in-office Boxers, our product has been critical to enabling success and productivity (Box is THE Content Cloud after all, enabling businesses to work, collaborate, and workflow any document securely and easily!). We also leverage a range of best-of-breed technologies for video communication (Zoom), messaging (Slack), secure identity (Okta), and other critical cloud tools to deliver uninterrupted remote work for all Boxers.

Creating a great physical workplace: pre-and post-pandemic

For our hybrid and in-office folks, our physical offices spaces at Box set the tone and reinforce our values. With cozy reading and collaboration spaces, to amenities such as hot lunch, snacks on each floor, a full-service coffee bar, game rooms and more, our Box offices marry fun and productivity. We have officially opened our offices in Warsaw, Poland and London, United Kingdom – welcoming Boxers back into our office spaces!

Applying safety first

Our office health and safety practices continue to remain critical. While US offices remain closed right now, our EMEA offices have re-opened their doors with 50% capacity. We’ve been focused on diligent cleaning, COVID training requirements, vaccination requirements, and daily health questionnaires. To ensure the comfort of all Boxers, returning to the office is voluntary (except for essential workers) until February 1, 2022.

#Fresh Air Fridays

In 2020, we added 3 Fresh Air Fridays (FAFs) –or Mental Wellness Mondays, which are global company-wide days off as a response to COVID and to help Boxers avoid burnout, refresh and recharge, and say THANK YOU for all their hard work. We have continued in 2021 with 6 additional FAFs added to our global holiday schedules, in addition to the regular days off at a country level and our flexible ‘time off when you need it’ policy. We know Boxers are more likely to rest and recharge when the entire company is off so we plan to add them again in 2022!

Building community inside and out

Community is core to Box and includes our Boxers, our customers, and our Partners. Every day we focus on leveraging the strengths of Box for the greater good, powering how the world works together --from organizations delivering COVID-19 vaccines, to those protecting foster children, to nonprofits on the front lines of disaster response. Through our technology platform, our Boxers, and company resources we are creating positive impact in our communities, whether we are working remotely or hybrid.

Our Box.org community focus areas of diverse tech pipelines, digital transformation, and being a good neighbor, has enabled us to provide over $40M to nonprofits through grants, donations, and product discounts. Over 75% of Boxers engage in social impact --volunteering with a cause they care about, making a donation to an organization and/or providing pro-bono consulting to a nonprofit (the industry average for employee engagement is 35%). In December 2020, our annual Impact Day of global volunteering was our first ever, fully virtual event. We’re excited to continue a fully virtual Impact Day this December to support our communities.

As the pandemic continues to evolve, so will our flex working policies and hybrid environment. Box is continuing to monitor conditions globally to ensure our Boxers feel safe, heard, and productive. We’re excited to have Boxers come back together to continue collaborating from anywhere at any time. Part of building the most successful teams, continue to drive the future of hybrid work where all Boxers can thrive!