DoorDash’s Hybrid Work Plan: Committing to Flexibility
Tags: Hybrid Work, Workplace, Working From Home, DoorDash

After collaborating with leaders and employees across DoorDash, we’ve decided that in January 2022, we will transition from our official work-from-home (WFH) guidance to a hybrid work model for all our corporate employees.* Recognizing that every team’s needs are different and that most of us want some level of flexibility in how we work, this new hybrid approach will enable us to best support our people and the work we do, together.

In the last year, the team at DoorDash has more than doubled in size to nearly 6,000 employees. We have hired not just hundreds, but thousands of incredible teammates, who are all united by our mission to empower local economies. We are operators and owners, who care deeply about advancing DoorDash’s work in the communities we serve, and we are each individuals, with families, interests, and passions that make us whole. We believe that supporting the needs of our employees, as people first, is fundamental to the success of our company and the fulfillment of our mission.

While the pandemic has been incredibly challenging, we have uncovered some silver linings in the ways we work remotely. Many of us have come to relish the increased time with our families, decreased time commuting, and more equitable experience of meeting with colleagues — across locations, teams, and levels — in the same virtual space. In coming to realize these WFH benefits, we have also come to see this as an opportunity to reframe and reinforce the way we support the people who make DoorDash what it is, while at the same time, supporting how we work.

Flexibility isn’t just a benefit, it’s an advantage

Before DoorDash shifted to WFH full time, we were actively seeking new ways to build in more flexibility for our team and how we work. For example, in late 2019 we moved into a new, larger office in San Francisco, featuring a designated space for in-person learning sessions and workshops. Across our corporate offices, we were exploring spatial redesigns to support cross-functional collaboration and give employees more choice in their work settings — and we are continuing this work as we look to office reopenings.

Beyond these changes to our workplace environments, and the standing paid time off policy we encourage all employees to fully utilize, the past year and a half cemented that flexibility can actually make us a stronger team and more fulfilled individuals — and that a one-size-fits-all expectation for in-office attendance isn’t a necessity or a boon to our success. This may be especially true for those such as women and caregivers, whose responsibilities have become disproportionately more demanding and difficult to balance during the pandemic, and Black employees, who have reported substantial increases in their sense of belonging at work and overall work-life balance since working at home rather than in an office. We understand that having more options for where we show up and collaborate is not only a viable option, but can be a benefit for DoorDash as we continue to grow and invest in our people. We believe that true innovation happens when everyone has a seat at the table, and we can work together to improve our offerings for merchants, Dashers, and consumers.

Hybrid work @ DoorDash

All corporate DoorDash employees are officially WFH until the end of this year.** In January 2022, we will reintroduce in-person work for these employees through a hybrid approach, encouraging live collaboration with a balance of remote flexibility.

So, what will “hybrid” mean at DoorDash? Come next year, we envision the majority of our employees will split their time between in-person collaboration from one of our offices, blended with the flexibility of remote work, as determined alongside their teams and managers. We imagine that about 80% of the company will be in the office several days a week, 15% will remain remote full-time, and 5% will work in an office every day. We will also consider requests from employees who would like to relocate or remain 100% remote permanently, working with team leads to determine if these options support the goals of our business, and work within their team dynamics and needs.

Forging ahead with equity and ownership as first principles

Having gone from near 100% in-person work to 100% remote, we are using the road ahead of us to create a more equitable and collaborative workplace for our employees, in a way that supports our shared ambitions for the future of our company and the impact we can make. Our lives extend far beyond the four edges of a Zoom screen and the four walls of an office, and we want to empower each and every person at DoorDash to do the best work of their careers, in service of our stakeholders, wherever they choose to be.

As we seek to meld the benefits of flexibility with the face-to-face collaboration that many of us have been missing, we are committing to a hybrid work environment, with the goal of empowering our employees with ownership. DoorDash has 12 company values that underpin all we do, and one of those values, be an owner, embodies the future we hope to create for our people. Through ownership, choice, and autonomy, we believe this flexible way forward will contribute to the greater good of our team and our mission.

DoorDash is a technology and logistics company connecting every local business to every local consumer, and we see face-to-face connection is a key driver for our continued innovation. By collaborating in-person in the communities we serve, we believe we can create better solutions and products for local audiences everywhere.

If you are interested in joining us, please visit https://careers.doordash.com/open-positions to explore open roles across the company — in over 20 offices, across the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, and Germany — and check out our Working @ DoorDash guide for more on what it’s like to work here.

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*Some teams at DoorDash require physical presence in an office or facility in order to do their jobs effectively. This includes some roles in IT, Workplace Services, Safety & Security, DoorDash Labs, DashMart, and DoorDash Kitchens, among others.

**In March 2021, we announced to our corporate employees in the U.S. and Canada that they would not be expected to return to working in an office for the rest of the year, hoping that the certainty of WFH flexibility would be a welcome change for our team after a year of very little. Following reopenings and eased restrictions in many cities, we have now given those interested in voluntarily returning to one of our US corporate offices the option to do so, as well.