What Some Of The World's Leading Companies Can Teach You About The Future Of Work

Last week, the FOWCommunity (that I helped create) held our first future of work forum in San Francisco. We had around 40 attendees that were hosted at the corporate offices of Udemy and Polycom took everyone out to dinner. The goal of the community and the forum is to bring together the world's most forward thinking organizations to explore what the future of work is going to look like and what companies are doing to adapt. Members include companies such as: Wells Fargo, Whirlpool, MasterCard, Polycom, Kohl's, AON, PwC, Accenture, Cisco, Sanofi, Agios, and around 30 other companies. Our speakers included: Pat Wadors- Chief Human Resources Officer of Linkedin Anna Binder- VP of People at Mulesoft Antonia Cusumano- Principal at PwC Paul Sebastian and Dan Chou- VP and GM of Udemy for business and director of sales Gloria Burke- Chief Knowledge Officer of Unisys Rich Pearson- SVP of Elance-Odesk Stuart Poole- Corporate Wellness at Fitbit Aaron Taylor Harvey- Environments Design Lead at Airbnb Here are the main takeaways: Anna Binder, VP, People, MuleSoft: Culture Is Not Beer on Fridays. How to Develop a Culture That Matters and Will Help You Win. At Mulesoft the head of HR is the CEO who personally interviews and speaks with every candidate that comes through their doors. They hire based on three core areas: Are you a good human? Are you smart? Do you DWIT (do what it takes?) to get things done? Anna also shared her thoughts on what a strong corporate culture should demonstrate, which is: Transparency - At Mulesoft everyone has full information on the company and the offices are organized in a way that promotes and fosters collaboration, they have open spaces and also places where employees can get some quiet/alone time. Connected - Leverage technology to share and connect with people and information. Autonomy - MuleSoft has an “unvacation” policy which demonstrates trust and management leads by example. Their expense policy is “spend money as if it were your own.” They’ve found that 95% of people will behave well 95% of the time. Diversity - A more diverse workforce leads to a better outcome Ownership - DWIT/GSD; Empower employees at the lowest level possible. At MuleSoft, equity is more heavily dispersed to those who embody ownership. They also give out ownership awards, which are nominated by peers.