Airbnb announces it won’t dock employees’ pay if they go remote

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The majority of the company's employees will not have to take a pay cut if they move away from the cities surrounding the company's offices. Brian Chesky, the company's co-founder and CEO, said in a thread that the change would be implemented after the most productive two-year period in the company's history. It laid off a quarter of its workforce during that time.

Other remote work policies are being changed. Employees will be able to live and work in over 170 countries for up to 90 days a year as long as they keep a permanent address. The company will have team gatherings, off-sites, and social events to allow its employees to meet face-to-face throughout the year.

Image: Brian Chesky on Twitter

The new model ofAirbnb is uncommon. After moving away from major metro areas, most employees will not have to take pay cuts. Companies like Square, and the like have embraced remote work as well. If you want to move to an area with a lower cost of living, you will have to take a pay cut at some companies.

It's hard to hold up the company as a shining example of how to treat employees because of its new remote work polices. Around 25% of its workforce was fired a few months into the Pandemic. According to a report from The New York Times, the values of belonging, love, and being like a family that the company promoted went out the window as it stared down the barrel of drastically reduced rates of travel. It almost feels like its new policies are a salve to its remaining workers, even though one that is coming years after the layoffs and years after other companies adopted similar polices.

It's not the only company that laid off workers during the Pandemic, though it did so because it bought too many houses, not because it couldn't do anything anymore.

Even if its employees are free when choosing where to work, it sounds like Airbnb is implementing some serious structure in other areas. Chesky notes that the company will be releasing two major product releases a year in order to make sure everyone stays organized.

It seems like the road to get there was bumpy, but it seems like it landed at a set of policies that could be attractive to current and potential employees. They work well with the vibe of the company's rental service. If it succeeds, it could influence other, larger companies to reconsider their own remote work polices, and its employees are on board with its ideas about the future of work.