The great returnship and the future of remote work

“Our lives have fit around our work for so long, how do we make our work fit around our lives?” asked Yelp’s Chief Diversity Officer Miriam Warren when she joined The Female Quotient and Advertising Week for a roundtable last week with leaders from Whalar, United Minds, McCann Worldgroup, Tienery, and The Atlantic. The panelists discussed how leaders can seize this opportunity to reset old practices to be more fair and dynamic, and better reflect the nature of work we do today.

Miriam spoke about how as Yelp embraces a remote-first workforce, leading with empathy has become more important than ever. In the panel conversation, Miriam noted a few ways that Yelp is embracing this monumental shift in how we work that will impact generations to come:

• Empathy can be learned. By helping people see others’ experiences we can help leaders and employees build the empathy muscle. At Yelp, we reserve Thursdays for speakers from both inside and outside of the company to discuss a variety of topics from mental wellness to baking, exposing our workforce and leaders to different viewpoints.
• The ”9 to 5” has been broken for a long time. Core hours for distributed teams can create flexibility, as well as connection. For example, if you’re on a bicoastal team, core hours might be 9:30am to 2pm PT. 
• Be human. Work has never been just work. It’s always been about eating, drinking, talking about people’s cats, and bringing in lemon bars. It’s more important than ever to care about each other as humans.

We look forward to continuing to build Yelp into a great place to work that supports the whole employee experience, whether they’re in the office or remote. If you’re interested in a five star career at Yelp, be sure to visit https://www.yelp.careers/, and take a peek at @LifeatYelp on Instagram to see Yelpers in action.