Teams are more distributed than ever. In many organizations, the majority of teams of people reporting to the same manager are now spread out over cities, not just around the floor of a building. Microsoft, for example, flipped from 61% of teams being co-located in 2019 to 64% being distributed across cities by 2022, a trend that continued into 2023. The average at other companies is now as high as 80% of teams having members in different locations.
This shift requires new approaches to building connection and cohesion in the distributed organizations that many of us now work in. We’re now at the point where there are clear takeaways from the first stages of experimentation, from how to structure offsite activities to how much companies need to invest.
Here are three key takeaways that I’ve learned from recent research and working with companies like Allstate, Atlassian, and Zillow that are investing in learning what works:
- Quarterly gatherings pay off. Bringing teams together for well-designed gatherings drives higher engagement and team performance than counting on chance encounters in the office and happy hours.
- Modest investments are required. Reduced investment in office space covers the funds needed to redesign space, fund travel, and create small teams that support teams and learning.
- Evolution, not answers. None of the firms I’ve talked with expect to ever be “done” experimenting, iterating and learning which investments pay off. They focus on one set of issues, then move on to the next level of challenge.
Since every organization is unique, there’s no one-size-fits all. But, as Atlassian’s Annie Dean put it to me recently, “none of us have all the answers—but we’re learning from each other.”
Distributed doesn’t mean “never in person”
The shift to flexibility was a net boost to connection at work. People who were given flexibility in where and when they worked felt 14% more connected to their teams, their managers, and their firm’s values, according to research we conducted at Future Forum, the think tank about work I co-founded. Even so, it was one of my team members who in 2021 said “I need to get together with you all.”
There’s clearly something that happens when we’re together for a few days, preferably spending at least half our time socially getting to know each other through meals, team-building,and volunteer activities. Atlassian has found that people who get together with their teams saw a 27% boost in engagement, and that the boost lasts four to five months.
That boost is even higher for two key groups: new hires and new graduates. Contrary to popular wisdom, sporadic office visits didn’t have the same lasting impact.
Prithwiraj Choudhury, a Harvard Business School professor, studied team gatherings at Zapier, a remote-first company, and found that the connections people made persisted unchanged for at least three months. Perhaps more important, he found that it was essential to design for diverse connections—otherwise people tended to connect along gender, age, and racial groups. Even something as simple as shifting table setups or orchestrating shared taxi rides from the airport can offset “birds of a feather flocking together.”
There are others leading the way forward. Two of my favorite examples also happen to span the alphabet: Allstate and Zillow.
Allstate’s approach to flexible work and experimentation
Allstate’s shift to a distributed workforce accelerated during the pandemic, as it heavily adopted a flexible work policy. Shedding its suburban Chicago campus, the company invested in a dozen global offices to foster connection. At Allstate, teams set norms for how often they get together, down to sub-function levels. For example, marketing analysts might get together only once a month, while the brand design team works together two or three days a week.
While 70% of Allstate’s nearly 54,000 employees are US-based, 81% of teams are distributed, and about 35% of people globally aren’t near a “pod,” Allstate’s term for its growing network of leased and on-demand office spaces.
This flexible approach has brought a number of benefits, including a 23% increase in job applicants and sizable improvements to applicant diversity: 12% more female and 11% more racial and ethnically diverse applicants. Allstate chief human resources officer Bob Toohey knew that the shift to flexibility wasn’t a “set-and-forget” moment; it would need ongoing investment.
In early 2023, Lauren DeYoung, who leads the “Future of Work” team at Allstate, and her team narrowed in on a couple of challenges. "We were three years into working differently, seeing positive outcomes and positive feedback from employees—but there were gaps." Most notably, while overall engagement was high at 84% and 90% of people felt connected to their own teams, only 68% felt connected outside of their team.
In 2023, she spearheaded a significant investment aimed at fostering connections within the company.
A $10 million experiment in connecting
DeYoung led the charge on a $10 million investment aimed at fostering connections within the company, translating Allstate's commitment to distributed work into tangible programs that enhance collaboration and employee well-being. The program was designed to foster autonomy for leaders, and drive organizational learning by letting leaders below the vice-president level create initiatives that cater to various team needs and business goals.
The variety of ways the investment—$180 per employee—was used by different teams was often surprising. Some held simple events, like meals together. Others used the money they received from the program to bolster travel funds. But some of the most unconventional were the most effective, like a Lego-building competition one team conducted, and a virtual team improv session another used to sharpen storytelling skills.
Overall, the program generated significant results: over 3,000 employees participated and gave the program a 91% satisfaction rating. In the six months after implementation, employee willingness to recommend Allstate as a great place to work rose from 81% to 84%.
DeYoung noted that "some leaders were hesitant to use the program, and it took time to build awareness and buy-in” driven by a combination of factors, including lack of time, lack of ideas of what to do and, in some cases, analysis paralysis on how to use the funds. Going into 2024, Allstate was looking to address those issues by starting the program earlier, providing more examples, and driving awareness across the company—realizing that it’s often a team member who will instigate action on the program, not just the leaders.
Rethinking space to foster connection
Beyond the $10 million connections fund, the People and Workplace teams started working together to assess Allstate’s portfolio of spaces and sort out how to best support a more distributed workforce. Certain offices needed redesign, to deliver on the needs of teams coming together to collaborate, versus heads-down open rows of desks.
Allstate’s footprint also needed to expand to serve the needs of groups of employees in more locations. Instead of taking on new leases, Allstate is experimenting with three new pods supported through a partnership with a marketplace for on-demand workplaces. .
The People and Workplace teams also now have some shared goals. Both People and Workplace leaders will be measured on their ability to build more engaging spaces, and increase connections across teams over the next few years.
Building connection in distributed reams: Lessons from Zillow's approach
Zillow has focused on the topic of connection ever since shifting in 2021 to its Cloud HQ approach—under which most employees can opt for fully remote arrangements. “If we’re going to be distributed, we will always also prioritize in-person connection,” says Corina Kolbe, vice president of Talent Success, highlighting the foundational belief in the power of physical interactions to enhance team dynamics and collaboration.
Zillow’s innovative “zRetreats” have become a cornerstone of its strategy to build connections. These retreats are carefully crafted events that bring distributed teams together in their office spaces, which were redesigned to encourage interaction and community. Starting as pilots in 2022, these gatherings allowed Zillow to test and learn what worked best in fostering effective gatherings.
Supporting gatherings has been particularly important in the age of distributed teams. Just under 50% of Zillow employees live within a 50-mile radius of an office in 2024, versus 99% back in 2019.
2022 was the “test year” for the company retreats, as Zillow started understanding the logistics and impacts of such gatherings. It polled employees after every event to gauge what worked, learning, for example, that a 50/50 blend of connection and business seemed to be most effective.
It also learned that leaders needed more support, since designing for building relationships requires some new tools. The highest-rated events had a variety of activities well beyond the business of being there: team dinners, on-site icebreakers, breakout sessions, and highly interactive elements like Shark Tanks and ask-me-anything sessions. Zillow now has a team of people who support the zRetreats and built its own technology to support the sessions and survey participants afterward. Kolbe says people analytics data inform the evolution of the programs, as ongoing feedback mechanisms are integral to refining their strategy.
By 2023, these retreats had become highly organized, significant events, with more than 500 planned gatherings, emphasizing structured support and intentional scheduling—supported by a four-person central group who not only orchestrated the “Cruise Calendar” but also worked directly with leaders to optimize larger gatherings.
Strong ties to weak ties
The insights gained from early retreats shaped their strategy, focusing on maximizing the value of these gatherings for individual teams, but there were gaps when looking at the company as a whole.
The events helped drive deeper connection and engagement, while the investment remained well below Zillow’s savings on offices. But there was one clear gap: connecting people across functions and teams. So, in 2024, Zillow’s plan is to drive fewer but bigger sessions: over two times the average size in 2023.
For example, Kolbe and Steve Bennett, who leads Zillow’s Workplace team, described their upcoming Finance and People team gathering in Seattle, a three-day event for over 500 Zillow employees with activities designed to build belonging across teams as well as within them. For attendees, the schedule includes time with teammates, convening of groups across functions, and “choose your adventure” activities that anyone can partake in.
Building a supportive infrastructure
Zillow also reset its spaces, moving from over 10 offices pre-pandemic to five now, redesigned to move away from the “rows of desks” common to many still towards a more collaborative, “coffee-shop feel” today.
Just as importantly, the Workplace team that Steve leads now includes traditional facilities management, but with a major change in orientation: facilities has moved into facilitation. Not only is there a central team of four people orchestrating the zRetreats approach, but there are one or two people in each office whose role is to help on a local level pull off the support needed for great events.
Fazit
What Allstate and Zillow are doing differs in some significant ways, but they’re operating off a common core set of principles. They know that being flexible in where people work doesn’t mean that in-person connection goes out the window. The modest investments they’ve made in small teams to build better organizational work practices, redesigned spaces, and funds for teams are paying off.
I think the most important factor though is their investment in learning. They’re not just putting in some headcount and funds, they’re iterating on programs that worked, developing new ones, and looking at both employee metrics and business results. Companies like Allstate, Atlassian, and Zillow get that the “future of work” doesn’t arrive, it’s built by those who invest in making it happen.
