Airbnb

INTRODUCTION

In 2016, Airbnb was ranked first in the list of ‘Best Places to Work’ in USA by Glassdoor . As a
part of its corporate culture, Airbnb provided an enabling working environment that took
care of the employee’s health, happiness, and experiences. The organization brought
together all employee facing functions under one umbrella and called it an ‘Employee
Experience team’. The team’s assignments included a gamut of activities. Mark Levy, Chief
of Employee Experiences, was credited with creating a unique employee experience at
Airbnb. However, in 2017, the company slipped to the 35th position on Glassdoor’s list of
‘Best Places to Work’, as not all the employees were happy with the company.

BACKGROUND NOTE

Founded by Joe Gebbia (Joe), Brian Chesky (Chesky), and Nathan Blecharczyk (Nathan),
Airbnb was an online marketplace for house owners or house tenants to rent spare rooms,
empty apartments, tree houses, castles, and villas to the general public. The general public,
in turn, booked these rooms over the internet. Airbnb did not own any rooms; instead, the
company worked as a broker and received a percentage of the fees from the guests and the
house owners for every room booked. Airbnb was a privately owned company and kept its
financials confidential. However, some analysts estimated that it had revenues of US$1.7
billion for the year 2016. EBIDTA were at US$ 450 million on US$ 2.8 billion in revenue for
2017. By 2016, Airbnb homes and rooms were available across 34,000 cities in 190
countries. As of 2017, the company had reached a new milestone: 4 million listings
worldwide.

HR PRACTICES AT AIRBNB

In 2011-12, Airbnb’s recruitment team was flooded with thousands of résumés from
potential job seekers. The team struggled to sieve through them to find the right candidate
at the right time. The team often did not revert to the job seekers when their candidature
got rejected. The talent acquisition team was struggling to provide the external job seeker a
good candidate experience and the internal business teams candidates at the right time. As
Jill Riopelle (Jill), Director of Global Recruiting, commented, “We were in a bad place. But
there were no guidelines on how to develop a candidate experience.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Analysts opined that the success of the employee experience at Airbnb had been its
alignment with the mission. Most Airbnb employees wanted to work for the company
because they were passionate about travel and the experience traveling brought in. One
employee at Airbnb mentioned on Glassdoor, “I am in my 50’s and I work for Airbnb. And
this is by far the best job I have ever had. Airbnb is creating something that touches people:
experience memories, relationships, who else does that?”

Questions:

1. Understand the employee experience initiatives undertaken by Airbnb.

2. Discuss and debate whether Airbnb will be able to sustain the employee experience
in the future.
3. Explore future strategies that Airbnb can adopt to maintain its position as the best
employer.