How to Support In-Person Interactions Within a Remote-First Workplace

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By now, it’s clear that remote work is here to stay. Gallup estimates that of the 125 million full-time jobs in the U.S., 60 million of these can be done from home. And according to numerous studies, the vast majority of companies that can offer remote or hybrid work arrangements are choosing to do so — and for good reason. Not only are employees just as productive working from home, but they’re also increasingly demanding this type of flexibility in a bid to regain control over their work-life balance.

Despite the widespread appetite for remote work, organizations that have opted for a fully remote model have encountered some challenges along the way. Take Dropbox, for example. The company was one of the first to pledge that it would never return to an office-based environment, announcing in October of 2020 that it would become a “Virtual First” company.

As it turns out, however, shifting to a fully remote workplace had some unintended consequences for the file-hosting company. In fact, Dropbox saw an unexpected increase in turnover in the fall of 2020, resulting in one of the highest attrition rates the company had ever experienced. A Business Insider article speculated that a lack of office perks might be one-factor driving people to quit, noting that “the move to virtual first and an end to the kinds of perks that brought people together IRL shifted their loyalties and made leaving that bit easier.”

However, a TIME magazine article contradicted this thinking, describing how the vast majority of Dropbox employees preferred the flexibility to work remotely and felt they were more productive working from home. “Who needs free lunches, fancy gyms, and yoga studios?” the article states. “Turns out what most employees really want — at least at Dropbox — is the freedom to live and work where and when they want.”

So if Dropbox’s team members didn’t care that much about office perks, what was it, then, that led so many of them to leave? One hint comes from the TIME article, in which a Dropbox employee, when asked to describe what she misses about going into the office, reminisces about afternoon breaks when workers would spend time together. “I get energy connecting with people,” she said, “and that’s harder in a virtual environment.”

Now, a new piece in Fortune confirms that a lack of in-person interactions was largely the reason behind the company’s unexpected increase in turnover back in 2020. In the article, chief people officer Melanie Rosenwasser emphasizes that in transitioning to a virtual-first model, “We lost that in-person connection, which is required for shared identity and purpose.”

But things have come a long way in the two years since Dropbox’s employees first went remote. The company’s virtual-first strategy remains in full effect, but there’s been a renewed focus on in-person interactions. And the results speak for themselves: Dropbox’s record-high attrition rate has fallen to the lowest in company history, and employee engagement scores have increased by 12% since 2020. 

Although the title of the Fortune article implies that offering in-person retreats was the primary way Dropbox achieved these results, in reality, the company has taken a multi-pronged approach to bring its team members together more often. Using their learnings and examples, in today’s article I’ll describe 3 ways that remote-first companies can support in-person interactions.

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