The Way We Work

Here is a snapshot on how we think about work at Belong.

The current environment

Much of what we loved and celebrated about work and other parts of life – but didn’t appreciate enough -  has been challenged by the past 18 months. The way we think about work has been put to the test and was forced to dramatically change. But it's now time to reconsider the norms that were imposed on us by the appropriately stringent requirements of our collective health.

Our philosophy about work

We define the ideal working environment by the experience of our community members. That is paramount because our culture revolves around our community. Thus, when making decisions we always begin by thinking about how to serve our community in the best possible ways. We start there because we started Belong in service of a broken industry, and because we wake up every day determined to fulfill our promise. 

We are in a very delicate stage of our growth: the infancy of our operations, product, and culture. Three interdependent factors will critically determine our destiny as we scale: communication, collaboration, and innovation. So, our work philosophy has evolved in relationship to them.

1. Collaboration

Our business is fueled by cross-team collaboration. There is simply no substitute for working through challenges and problem solving by being physically together in the same space. Especially at this point in our growth trajectory. 

We all know that technology has progressed quickly, allowing new levels of virtual collaboration between teams.  But there is also no doubt that much is lost when we bounce from Zoom to Zoom,  or respond to flat, emotionless messages in Slack instead of looking our teammates in the eye, reading their body language, and seeing their smiles.  (Or disagreements, that’s important, too.)

As a startup, we need to make decisions faster than big companies. That is an imperative that we must never waiver from.  And due to the physical nature and human aspect of Belong, we have stronger dependencies between ops, experience, growth, and product.

2. Innovation

Innovation does not only happen in controlled environments such as structured brainstorming sessions and meetings. Many -if not most - great ideas come from casual conversations at the coffee machine, water cooler, lunch table, or, a favorite of Belongers, going for a walk together around sunny downtown San Mateo.   In a favorite book of ours “Where Good Ideas Come From”,  Steven Johnson writes about the coming together of divergent minds in the 18th century London created waves of innovation.  

Because of the promise we made to our community and ourselves - to create a better, technology-enabled marketplace for homeowners and residents as quickly as possible -  we cannot afford to miss out on t interactions that can significantly accelerate our development. To facilitate this further, we will encourage more walking/coffee meetings. We will be holding all brainstorming, decision, and all-hands meetings in person.

3. Communication

Wars have started because of poor communication. Companies have failed because of it. Marriages have been split asunder.  It is our duty to create the right channels and flow of communication as we scale.  To build on my earlier comment about virtual communication,  it remains difficult to truly connect with the people on the other side of the camera. Virtual communication negates the formal debrief, the informal post-game chat, and the quick temperature-taking that are so critical to the alignment and relationship ecosystem we need at this stage in our growth.

Together is the only option

The dream we are working so hard to achieve takes us on weekly roller coasters. What we are doing is hard. It is revolutionary. And it is why we must work, shoulder to shoulder, with our teammates. 

We must be together to feel like we truly Belong, to evoke that sense of togetherness that we want to cultivate among our Community Members.  Our name is more than a word, it describes how we operate internally to change the world around us.  It reminds us why we started our journey in the first place. #​​we_are_team_players

It is our duty, as owners of this company and masters of our own growth, to create and maintain the best conditions for it to flourish.   We have a high bar for excellence, and achieving that requires intense focus on every detail of that environment. #we_have_high_standards.

At the same time, we recognize that there is a lot of value in having the space for undisturbed deep thinking and in retaining commute time. Having a deep focus, time to reflect, and time to take care of personal matters is critical to Belongers’ overall well-being and commitment to our mission; it is valuable for us to create and cultivate that space.

Having one WFH day per week will allow for more purposeful interactions when we are together delivering on our mission. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, we will congregate in our offices to problem solve, create, innovate, and maintain our sense of Belonging. 

Thus, every Belonger whose job requires high collaboration will have the flexibility to work from home on Wednesdays. 

This policy will take effect immediately, and will apply to our teams based in our offices in North America. Our wonderful Pros, of course, are exempt from it. We are working with our excellent overseas teams to determine the best structure for their workdays. 

Workflows by team

After much thought, here are specific logistics for each of our six teams:

1. Operations

Most of our team is located in the field, doing wonderful work on behalf of our community members. Clearly, our field team will continue being out there seven days a week, come rain or come shine, serving as the face and heart of Belong. 

Our HQ Ops team, divided between Draper and San Mateo, benefits enormously from being co-located with each other – Scheduling with Inspections, Vendor Relationships with Field Execution – and with other closely cooperating teams: Experience and Growth. 

We need to plan to spend as much time together as possible. During our work from home day, we’ll continue being online, connected, and available to each other and our colleagues, as Operations, still has many reactive components that necessitate being hands-on and available. We’ll also use our work from home day to focus on those vital initiatives that may require extra focus, which isn’t always an option in an office environment. 

2. Product & Design

Large portions of the design process are inherently collaborative. We listen and collect feedback from other teams cross-functionally. We sit and brainstorm solutions with engineering. We give each other feedback on mockups and feature releases by literally pointing at pixels on the screen. Being in person most of the time is essential, so the plan is to be together 4 days a week, using WFH Wednesdays for those moments when being alone creates windows for a different kind of focus and insight-generation.

3. Engineering

The nature of Engineering has already allowed us to establish a remote culture with a team of engineers from San Mateo, Argentina, and soon Mexico. 90% of the engineers are individual contributors. At the same time, they have to work closely with Product, Design, and other stakeholders to build successful products.  With the help of software tools (like JIRA, Balsamiq, Figma, Google Suite) we can achieve the required collaboration remotely. 

Communication within the team is also crucial for our collective. For that reason, we are deliberately clustered around specific locations to foster communication between engineers in the same time zone. The expectation is that engineers will be available from 9 am - 6 pm in their local time zones, and will proactively let the team know of any unavailability during this period. This is essential as all our meetings will be virtual and we strive to minimize the delay in getting responses from each other. 

Engineers from San Mateo should plan to work at least two days from the office to bridge the gap in culture between HQ and other locations. We will revisit this policy once we have established a stronger remote culture and process.

Engineers should get approval from their managers to work outside of the home location.

4. Experience

Concierge

• The Concierge team requires a high level of collaboration between Growth, Operations, and our Front Lines teams to deliver on our team’s mission of building the world’s most loved rental experience through unparalleled service and authentic connection. 
• As each member of the team is expected to act like an owner and builder of Belong, we found it to be imperative our team's workflows are designed to foster in-office collaboration across teams. We expect each Concierge to be in the office 4 days a week with the optionality of working from home on Wednesdays. If you choose to WFH that day, your office must be professionally set up for taking Member calls - and that you are completely available. There should be no difference in the quality, responsiveness, and availability that you would have at home vs an in-office setup from the Perspective of the Member. 

Coordinators

• Our Coordinators who work in the Philippines have already demonstrated the ability to work from home the past few years. We will continue to operate as a fully remote team for our Philippines team but will review every quarter whether the performance of this setup aligns with our team’s mission and KPIs.

We are investing in a new team of Coordinators who work in the U.S., so we have the Voice of the Community Member in our HQ2 at all times. At this stage, we believe it is vital to have this team operate 100% in the office so we can learn the most from the team’s feedback and so Belong can quickly respond to Member’ needs. We will evaluate this policy quarterly/ at review time as well as the team grows in its maturity. 

5. Growth (Sales)

As an early-stage startup taking on a 4.5T marketplace, Belong is a pioneer in addressing one of the world’s best-untapped marketplaces. Our ambition is to be the next great real estate tech startup, creating an unparalleled experience for homeowners and residents alike.

As we define our culture, we offer the unique opportunity for each early team member to leave a lasting impression and make valuable contributions in shaping the environment that will be a catalyst for the next great tech unicorn.

Our culture will enable our success via:

1. Energy

We will infuse our culture with the energy and enthusiasm to carry us from the market traction phase to the public markets. Working closely together and celebrating wins together not only encourages us to push hard to exceed our goals but also sends waves of excitement throughout the office as we build Belong together.  

2. Speed

Every new Homeowner and every new Resident sends a cascading effect as we rise to serve our customers well. Each loved home requires growth to be tightly in sync with partner teams, particularly Experience and Operations. This camaraderie enables the organic cultivation of relationships, and thus fosters quick information flow - critical to getting it right for our customers every time. Speed is a competitive advantage, allowing us to out-execute the competition. 

3. Learning

As we build a world-class growth organization, we must each improve daily. Sharing insights, recommendations, and techniques fosters an environment of learning that will allow us to advance our homeowners’ Belong experiences and every team member’s career development. This is mutually beneficial, as we will be able to improve our skillset via knowledge sharing, mentorship, and friendly competition which will bring out the best in everyone.

Taken together, these are the drivers of why Belong will be moving hybrid work policy, allowing employees the flexibility to work a day at home per week in order to take time to develop their own work product to achieve our lofty targets, as this is conducive to the overall trajectory of our company. 

As Growth Team Members, we are the silver bullet and must lead by example. We drive the top line; setting the pace is always our job.

6. People Experience

The Talent team does not require frequent interactions with the rest of the business and the work is mostly focused on finding the best talent and bringing them into the company. For that reason, the collaboration across teams is minimal, thus the expectation is to be in the office one or two days per week. Of course, the Talent team will maintain their seats in their closest hubs and are encouraged to go to the often as frequently as they see fit. 

For the People team, it’ll depend on the role: for the teammates taking care of the Belongers’ journey, we expect them to be at the office 3 days a week while business partners shall follow a similar schedule to the Talent team with the commitment to travel, if applicable, to see the business leaders they support once a month. Anyone in charge of benefits, tools, scheduling, tech, and similar will be able to work fully remotely.

We Value Feedback

We are excited to roll this program out and to keep refining our practices. #we_value_feedback, so we ask you to continue to share it, always keeping in mind that we are all about respective disagreement. This policy will evolve as we mature as an organization.

Of course, when you are working at home, you will maintain the same availability as you would in the office. When dealing with community-facing calls, it is crucial to maintain a neutral background and take the calls from a quiet place

Today, at this tender stage in our growth, we chose the path of Belonging, both for our community and our professional development. Thank you.