Salesforce has released a new report on workplace automation, showing it leads to substantially improved job satisfaction.
Workplace automation is often thought of in terms of efficiency and productivity. According to Salesforce, however, it has significant benefits to employee well-being.
The company’s research shows that 89% of employees using workplace automation were more satisfied with their jobs, while 84% were more satisfied with their company. Even more telling, 91% of full-time workers say automation helps them achieve a better work/life balance.
Cross-team collaboration also improved. Using low code automation tools led to 90% of IT users crediting automation with more satisfying collaboration across departments.
Salesforce says the research provides a roadmap for companies looking to help employees avoid burnout, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic drags on.
Now, as burnout becomes more prevalent in the second year of the pandemic, businesses are looking for ways to keep their employees happier. This new research suggests they may find those solutions in automation — flipping the script entirely on fears of the past.
Google is delaying its back-to-office date again, this time as a result of the omicron COVID-19 variant.
Like most tech companies, Google has repeatedly delayed its back-to-office date as the pandemic has continued. The company last postponed its date in late August, moving it from mid-October to January 10.
According to CNBC, Chris Rackow, the company’s security VP, sent an email to employees telling them the the company would wait until the new year to make decisions about a return to the office. Rackow says the company will be looking to determine when it can safely return to a “stable, long-term working environment.” As a result, no employees will be required to switch to a hybrid workflow by the January date, as previously planned.
Rackow didn’t specifically mention the omicron variant, but Business Insider had earlier reported that Google cited the variant when postponing its back-to-office date in specific regions that are already seeing the variant spread.
Health officials are concerned by the omicron variant because of the high number mutations it has, leading some experts to believe it may be better at evading immunity — both from previous infections and from vaccines.
If omicron becomes as much of a threat as experts fear, it’s a safe bet Google won’t be the only company pushing back a return to the office.
“Slack has already transformed the way we work at Salesforce,” says Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor. “Since we have deployed Slack internally, we sent 46% fewer e-mails. And in the last 30 days alone, our employees have sent nearly 60 million Slack messages and conducted 500,000 Slack Huddles. We run Salesforce on Slack.”
Not only has Salesforce transformed the way they work with Slack but so are the customers of Salesforce. The company sees Slack as a core platform for powering digital transformation.
“Customer 360 and Slack are powering this transformation for companies in every industry in every region of the world,” said Taylor in yesterday’s earnings call. “Slack outperformed our expectations in the first full quarter as a part of the Salesforce family. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44% year-over-year. The adoption of Slack Connect was up an astonishing 176% year-over-year. Slack is not just a product, Slack is a network, and it’s just incredible to see that growth.”
The company seemed pleasantly surprised about how transformative Slack is to the operations of large enterprises. As Slack brought on millions of new users during the pandemic they focused on innovation that has made Slack much more than a simple communications platform.
“Slack also continues to innovate at an unbelievable pace,” notes Taylor. “Slack Huddles, which is Slack’s new real-time audio capability, is already used weekly by over 1/3 of Slack users. And Slack Clips, the new asynchronous video capability, are being played nearly 1 million times a week. And this month at Slack Frontiers, which I hope all of you have watched; and if you haven’t, you can watch it online. Stewart and the team are now the next generation of Slack’s platform, and it’s going to truly transform the way companies think about workflows and automation.”
Customer 360 and Slack are powering this transformation for companies in every industry in every region of the world, according to Taylor.
Slack outperformed our expectations in the first full quarter as a part of the Salesforce family. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44% year-over-year. Adoption of Slack Connect was up an astonishing 176% year-over-year. Slack is not just a product, Slack is a network, and it’s just incredible to see that growth.
Slack also continues to innovate at an unbelievable pace. Slack Huddles, which is Slack’s new real-time audio capability, is already used weekly by over 1/3 of Slack users. And Slack Clips, the new asynchronous video capability, are being played nearly 1 million times a week. And this month at Slack Frontiers, which I hope all of you have watched; and if you haven’t, you can watch it online. Stewart and the team are now the next generation of Slack’s platform, and it’s going to truly transform the way companies think about workflows and automation.
“That is definitely what I saw firsthand,” said Co-CEO Mark Benioff. “I was like, how could it be that an airline is basically front-ending their entire system with Slack? That’s a shock to me.”
“Slack is the system of engagement for every workflow, every application, every person on your enterprise,” added Taylor. “It’s really an amazing platform vision. And absolutely watch Slack Frontiers. If you haven’t seen it, I think it will blow your mind.”
“Every CEO and every Board I talk to is focused on how they can succeed in this era of flexible work,” says Taylor. “According to Slack’s research, 93% of workers are looking for flexibility when they work, and 76% are looking for flexibility where they work. Companies need to connect their employees, their partners, their customers from anywhere because we all know we’re not going to be in the office 5 days a week.”
“Our offices aren’t going away,” he said. “It’s just that your digital headquarters is going to be more important because it’s truly the infrastructure that connects all of it, and especially in this new normal. And Slack and Customer 360 together are really powering this transformation.”
Slack Has Already Transformed Salesforce, Says Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor
After you stop making these 5 deadly SEO mistakes your google traffic is going to increase, says digital marketing expert Neil Patel. Sometimes just making a simple change can dramatically increase your traffic. For instance, Patel says that the moment he took out the dates from his URL his search traffic shot up 58 percent in just 30 days.
Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses the five beginner SEO mistakes in his latest video release:
Mistake 1: Putting Dates in URLs
The first mistake is putting dates in your URL. I used to do this with NeilPatel.com. What a huge mistake. My URL structure used to be NeilPatel.com/year/month/TitleofmyBlogPost. The moment I took out the dates from my URL guess what happened to my search traffic? Within 30 days it went up by 58 percent. I’m not talking about taking my search traffic from a 1,000 visitors to you 1,580 visitors. I had hundreds and thousands of visitors from Google already each month with dates in my URL. The moment I removed them I saw an additional 58 percent increase in my search traffic.
So whatever URL structure you have just make sure it does not have dates. Reason being is when you have a date in your URL, Google thinks of your site as being relevant to that date. You write a blog post and they’re like oh, this blog post must be related to January 12, 2025, or whatever the date is today. If you want your content to continually rank as evergreen content you can’t put dates in your URL.
Mistake 2: Thinking of Your Site as a Silo
The second mistake that you’re making is you’re thinking of your site as a silo. It doesn’t matter how many different sections you have or categories, it’s still one site. It’s on one domain name. For example, my blog is about marketing, so when I create content I link to all the other marketing posts (on my site) that are relevant to the posts that I just released.
You should consider thinking of your website as one big site versus different silos so when you write content you should link to other pieces of content that are relevant. That way all of your pages are going to be interconnected and they’re going to rank higher.
Mistake 3: Thinking of SEO as Just SEO
The third mistake that you’re making is you’re thinking of SEO as just SEO. It’s not just about on page code. It’s not just about building links. It’s not even just about getting social shares. It’s about building a brand. Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, once said that brands are the solution. What he’s talking about is that when Google was trying to figure out what sites to rank higher than others he decided as well as ton of other people in Google that if you have a brand you should rank higher.
Why is that? You’ve heard of this thing called fake news. It’s a great way to combat that. It’s not just Facebook who’s concerned about fake news. It’s also Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all of the major platforms out there. Building a brand does wonders for you especially when it comes to SEO. You can do things like collecting emails to get people to keep coming back to your site. You can use tools like HelloBar to do that for free. You can use tools like Subscribers to do push notifications so that when people come to your website within one click they can subscribe. Getting all of those people to keep coming back will help reinforce your brand to them. That’ll help you climb in the rankings in the long run.
Mistake 4: Just Writing Content
The fourth mistake is just writing content. I know you’re that content is king, how is that a mistake? Writing content isn’t a mistake. It’s writing content and then not updating it, and that’s what most people do. They just write content and they write more new content then after that they write more content and guess what they do after that they write more new content. If you update your content Google’s going to see it as fresh, hip, new, and still relevant, and rank it higher.
With over a billion blogs out there Google likes picking brand new updated content versus old outdated content. This doesn’t mean you have to rewrite the whole article. It could just be paragraph or two or a few lines. It could just be reviewing an article and making sure it’s still up to date where you make no modifications because it’s still good to go.
Mistake 5: Not Thinking About the User
The last mistake you’re making is not thinking about the user. Google looks at something called user metrics. Whether it’s the browser or the toolbar Google wants to make sure people have an amazing experience. They’re using all those platforms to track how and when people come to your website and how they perceive it.
They can’t talk to them by serving them or anything like that. What they can see is when someone performs a Google search, clicks on the listing landing on your site and within a second they are they clicking the back button. If they are it tells Google your website or that web page isn’t relevant. By putting the user first instead of putting SEO first it’ll help you climb to the top.
Amazon has updated its guidance for employees, telling them they will be able to continue working remotely.
Amazon has been working to adapt to the pandemic-fueled shift to remote work. Like many others, the company has changed its guidance as the pandemic has continued, exploring different possibilities for a “new normal.”
In CEO Andy Jassy’s latest email to staff, Jassy acknowledges the company has changed direction a couple of times.
We’ve shared a couple of updates on this topic, first thinking we’d be back in the office in September 2021, and then by January 2022, with the suggestion that we should all try to be in the office at least three days a week. This guidance prompted questions, like, “Who decides which days, does the team need to be in the same days, are there certain functions or teams that can work more effectively at home vs the office (and vice versa),” and many more. We met several times as a leadership team to discuss these questions, and generally agreed on three things.
Ultimately, leadership decided no one knows the answers to those questions at this stage, there is no one-size-fits-all solution and the company will need to keep experimenting to find how to best navigate the current situation. As a result, Amazon is changing its focus.
Instead of prescribing a set amount of days to be in the office, the company will leave the decision to individual teams. The main focus will be on serving customers, and making sure their needs are being met.
Jassy said the company wants most “people close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting within a day’s notice.” At the same time, Jassy said the company wants to continue supporting individuals that want to work remotely for a few weeks in a different location, voicing support for the importance of recharging from time to time.
We want to support this flexibility and will continue to offer those corporate employees, who can work effectively away from the office, the option to work up to four weeks per year fully remote from any location within your country of employment.
In many ways, Amazon is taking a similar stand as Microsoft, no longer placing a time limit on when things will get back to normal and adopting an approach that focuses on adapting to the current reality.
As mentioned earlier, these are unusual times and we’re all learning together what we believe is the best way to work together to make customers’ lives easier and better every day. And with it being so early in our mission, with lots of invention and change in front of us, you can bet that we will continue to adjust as we keep learning what makes most sense for our customers and teams.
Slack is going all-in on remote work, wanting its executives to lead by example by limiting the amount of time they spend in the office.
Few companies have benefited from the global pandemic, and ensuing shift to remote work, as Slack. The company’s corporate messaging platform quickly became a staple of teams looking to stay connected and productive, despite the physical distance.
After Salesforce purchased Slack, the companies began to emphasize a “digital-first” approach. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently saidemployees “can do their job at home, they can be successful from anywhere,” and said Salesforce was helping customers achieve that.
In an effort to make sure its executives lead by example, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told CNN that executives are being encouraged to spend no more than three days a week in the office.
Executives will lead by example. There won’t be any dedicated executive floors in any of our offices, and executives will focus their office time on team events and customer interaction. Our guidance to leaders is to spend fewer than three days per week in the office.
Butterfield framed the policy as part of a goal to build a better workplace.
This is no time for retreat to the comfort of well-worn habits, or meager attempts to accommodate a restive workforce. This is a time for business leaders to build a better workplace and world.
Many companies have made remote and hybrid work a permanent policy, after the pandemic demonstrated that employees can be productive while working remotely. Few, however, have gone as far as Slack in encouraging the adoption of the new paradigm.
Butterfield acknowledged there would be challenges along the way, but expressed confidence it would pay off.
Embracing this digital-first shift won’t happen overnight. But if we’re flexible while we learn, experiment and evolve, we’ll make work simpler, more pleasant and more productive.
United Airlines is taking a zero-tolerance policy toward the unvaccinated, with plans to fire employees who refuse to get the jab.
Companies around the world are rolling out mandates, requiring their employees to get vaccinated in order to return to work. Many companies are especially emphasizing mandates for employees that travel, given their increased risk of exposure.
United Airlines told Reuters that some 593 of its employees are at risk of being fired over refusing to comply with the mandate. The company had set a deadline of September 27, and will start firing the non-compliant as early as Tuesday.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision but keeping our team safe has always been our first priority,” Chief Executive Scott Kirby and President Brett Hart said in a memo, according to Reuters.
Unlike many tech companies, T-Mobile wants employees back in the office by October 15.
Many companies have postponed their initial plans to bring employees back into the office as a result of the Delta variant. Many companies have pushed their plans back to the beginning of 2022, while Microsoft has said it will stop projecting a return-to-office date altogether and simply let science and data dictate the date.
T-Mobile, on the other hand, only pushed its return-to-office date back by one month, and wants employees in the office — at least part time — no later than October 25, according to The Seattle Times. Even then, the company would like vaccinated employees to return sooner. The company has taken a number of steps to ensure employee safety and peace of mind.
“Because we’re taking this big step to ensure your safety at our offices, I’m also urging employees to stick to our planned September 20 or earlier date for returning to the office with your flexible resident or hybrid schedule,” Mike Sievert, T-Mobile CEO, said Aug. 31 in an internal email seen by The Seattle Times. “Our spaces are open and ready for you, and it is time to come back regularly.”
Employees of Apple, Google and other companies have pushed back on efforts to return to the office, especially when those efforts seemed premature. It remains to be seen how much T-Mobile employees will object.
Hybrid workflows may be the talk of the day, but Braintrust CEO Adam Jackson says distributed work is the direction companies should be going.
Companies around the world are embracing hybrid workflows. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, companies of all sizes and across industries sent their employees home to work remotely. Many companies saw measurable benefits from remote work, including reduced real estate costs, happier employees and improved quality of life.
As a result of remote work’s success, many companies have decided to permanently embrace a hybrid workflow, giving employees the option of working remotely at least part of the week. According to Jackson, however, those measures don’t go far enough.
Jackson makes his argument in an article for Forbes.
Because going hybrid isn’t enough. It’s not enough to scale your teams quickly, and it’s not enough to get the best people working on the projects that matter most.
If you want to lead your business into the future, then you need to start looking beyond today’s best strategies and to the strategies for the future. In a world where no one knows what the next six months will look like, think about the trends that will shape the next six years.
Jackson goes on to highlight three benefits of a fully distributed workforce, including access to a larger talent pool, the opportunity to have a more specialized focus and accelerated innovation.
While many companies are still struggling to come to terms with a hybrid workforce, Jackson’s argument should provide food for though for executives looking for new ways to be competitive over the next decade.
Microsoft has shared a number of insights about how remote work has become the “new normal,” and updated several apps to reflect that.
Like many companies, Microsoft was working to bring employees back into the office starting in October. With the surge in Delta cases, however, the company is not only pushing back its return to the office date, but is no longer projecting a new target. Instead, according to Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Modern Work, the company recognizes “our ability to come together will ebb and flow,” and will simply base its decisions on public health guidance moving forward.
The company also reveals that, while its research shows that most employees crave in-person time at work, many still want to maintain the flexibility of remote work. There are also disparities between the amount of time managers and employees want to be in the office. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella refers to these complexities as the Hybrid Work Paradox.
Despite any challenges, however, Spataro says “going forward, the digital employee experience is the employee experience.” The company is rolling out updates to multiples apps and services to better reflect that reality.
Microsoft Teams will receive AI-enabled cameras, active speaker tracking and people recognition. Outlook will gain a new Outlook RSVP feature so individuals can specific whether they will attend in-person or digitally, as well as redesigned Working hours to better accommodate and notify others of flexible work schedules. The company will also make the Microsoft Viva Connections mobile app available as a public preview later this month.
It’s clear Microsoft is all-in on hybrid remote, accepting it as the new reality and determined “to take a learn-it-all approach, and lead with data rather than dogma.”
Marc Benioff: Employees ‘Can Be Successful From Anywhere’
Mad Money’s Jim Cramer interviewed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff about the surge in Delta cases and whether people would return to the office.
Benioff compared pandemic response in San Francisco and Geneva, saying it felt like A Tale of Two Cities. Whereas there are a number of restrictions in place in San Francisco, when he traveled to Geneva a day later there were no restrictions, with in-person meetings and far less concern over the COVID variant.
Nonetheless, Benioff expressed his belief the pandemic has fundamentally changed the new normal for the workforce.
“The phenomenon that I see happening globally, is not as many employees are coming back into their offices globally as any CEO expected,” Benioff said. “And you’re really starting to see some very low attendance numbers in offices because employees are so productive at home.
“So they can do their job at home, they can be successful from anywhere. The companies and our customers are successful. It’s incredible, but the way they’re being successful has completely changed.
“The pandemic is A Tale of Two Cities, but the new normal is not. We’re starting to see this new normal appear, and business is going to be quite different as we come into this new world.”
Harvard Business School has released a new report highlighting just how “broken” the current hiring system is.
Virtually everyone has had the experience of applying for a job, seemingly the perfect candidate, only to be excluded from consideration with no good explanation. According to Harvard Business School, that scenario is more reality than suspicion.
Many companies rely on automated hiring systems to aid in the process, but those very systems are creating much of the problem.
These systems are vital; however, they are designed to maximize the efficiency of the process. That leads them to hone in on candidates, using very specific parameters, in order to minimize the number of applicants that are actively considered. For example, most use proxies (such as a college degree or possession of precisely described skills) for attributes such as skills, work ethic, and self-efficacy. Most also use a failure to meet certain criteria (such as a gap in full-time employment) as a basis for excluding a candidate from consideration irrespective of their other qualifications.
As a result, they exclude from consideration viable candidates whose resumes do not match the criteria but who could perform at a high level with training. A large majority (88%) of employers agree, telling us that qualified high-skills candidates are vetted out of the process because they do not match the exact criteria established by the job description. That number rose to 94% in the case of middle-skills workers.
Harvard Business School recommends a number of changes in the hiring process, including changing evaluation filters from negative criteria to affirmative, customizing the hiring approach for hidden workers, establishing new evaluation metrics and more.
The full report is well worth a read for anyone involved in the hiring process.
In addition to leading its rivals in 5G, T-Mobile also has the most diverse workforce among the major US carriers.
T-Mobile has been making strides on all fronts in recent years, buying Sprint, leapfrogging AT&T to become the number two carrier and has taken the lead in the 5G race. The company also boasts the most diverse workforce, according to The Seattle Times, with people of color accounting for 60% of its employees.
Speaking about the company’s progress, CEO Mike Sievert said racial justice and diversity have been major points of focus.
Over the last year, we focused heavily on our people and our culture. We guided teams through the significant shifts in our business and a pandemic-world, while witnessing protests for greater racial justice that took place across our country. We implemented measures to help employees manage the social, emotional, and economic stress of the pandemic while undertaking the important journey of uniting our company behind a new company vision, mission, and values. We also launched our five-year Equity In Action plan, which reflects our commitment to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion even more strongly in our company culture with ambitious programs to continue building diverse talent across our company to reflect communities we serve.
Google has pushed its return to the office date back again, just weeks after a previous delay.
Several weeks ago Google pushed its return date from September to mid-October as a result of the Delta COVID variant. Delta has been a responsible for a surge in cases worldwide, and led to “breakthrough” cases in vaccinated individuals.
The company has now informed employees they will not be required in the office till at least January 10, according to The New York Times.
CEO Sundar Pichai let employees know in an email. He said that once the deadline passes, offices in each country will be responsible for deciding when to have employees back, based on the circumstances in their locale. Even then, employees will receive a 30-day notice before coming back.
Microsoft has hired former Uber exec Manik Gupta to help it build “world-class consumer experiences across all of Microsoft.”
Gupta was head of product at Uber, and spent a number of years before that overseeing Google Maps. Microsoft has been working to expand the consumer aspect of its business, and Gupta will help oversee those endeavors, specifically Microsoft Teams consumer, GroupMe and Skype.
“Manik’s experience… will be invaluable to us building world-class consumer experiences across all of Microsoft,” says Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President in charge of Microsoft 365 Collaboration, whom Gupta will report to. The internal memo was seen by The Verge.
Gupta’s hire is good news for Microsoft’s customers and should be a boon to the company’s efforts.
Apple is already experiencing pushback on its announced return-to-office plans, with employees writing a letter objecting and citing demands.
Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to employees last week outlining the company’s return-to-office policy. The company wants employees to be in the office Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the option to work remotely Wednesday and Friday. Employees whose roles require more collaboration would be required to be in the office four or five days a week.
In the email, Cook emphasized the value of in-person collaboration, saying “video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate.”
It appears some of Apple’s employees disagree, and are objecting to the company’s plans. In a letter seen by The Verge, Apple employees are framing the decision as something that could, and already has, force some to reconsider their employment.
“We would like to take the opportunity to communicate a growing concern among our colleagues,” the letter reads. “That Apple’s remote/location-flexible work policy, and the communication around it, have already forced some of our colleagues to quit. Without the inclusivity that flexibility brings, many of us feel we have to choose between either a combination of our families, our well-being, and being empowered to do our best work, or being a part of Apple.”
Adding to the issue is the claim that Apple has been tone-deaf over the last year, not listening to what the employees want.
“Over the last year we often felt not just unheard, but at times actively ignored,” the letter continues. “Messages like, ‘we know many of you are eager to reconnect in person with your colleagues back in the office,’ with no messaging acknowledging that there are directly contradictory feelings amongst us feels dismissive and invalidating…It feels like there is a disconnect between how the executive team thinks about remote / location-flexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple’s employees.”
The employees are requesting a number of concessions, including remote work being left up to teams to decide, just as hiring decisions are. Other requests include clearer communication and survey/feedback options about remote work; better accommodation for disabilities, regardless of the work environment or location; a question added to exit surveys to determine if lack of remote work was a factor; and more information regarding the environmental impact of remote work versus returning to the office.
Given the blockbuster year Apple has experienced — including the introduction of the M1 chip, M1 Macs, the new M1-based iPad Pro, AirTags and more — the company may find it difficult to justify a hard line on in-office work when so much as been accomplished remotely.
Watch this webcast to learn more about migrating your tax processes to the cloud. It is now possible to accelerate your indirect tax processes with cloud technology. By utilizing tax technology you can address critical infrastructure changes, provide faster and more reliable access for remote users, increase scalability, and reduce costs.
Implementation of a new tax technology throughout your business can make it easier to scale for growth, as well as integrate with your ERP, point of sale (POS), and subscription billing service. According to a survey conducted by CIO.com, 78% of IT professionals expect digital transformation to greatly impact their organization within a year. How are you going to change your business?
In this on-demand webcast, Heather Ingram, cloud practice leader from Vertex Consulting, and Vince Morasco, cloud manager from Vertex Product Management, will walk you through multiple areas to consider before, during, and after the migration.
Slack is experiencing an outage, with some users unable to send messages.
The problems first showed up shortly after 1:00 PM ET, with users having trouble loading Slack or sending message. Some users reached out on Twitter to check on the issue, which Slack acknowledged.
Slack is down for some users at the moment, and other users are unable to send messages. We're working hard to get things back up and running, sorry for the disruption! https://t.co/Adf57Dy1MK
On the company’s status page, it says it is still working on addressing the problem.
Some users may be experiencing issues loading Slack. We’re actively digging into this issue and will report back as soon as we have an update to share. We’re sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime.
We’re still working towards a fix, and users may still be facing errors when attempting to load Slack. We appreciate all your patience in the meantime and we’ll continue to keep you posted.
Zoom has announced it will release Zoom Events this summer, in an effort to help companies of all sizes tackle virtual events.
The virtualization of in-person events has been just one of the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything from big events — like Apple’s WWDC and Microsoft’s events — to smaller companies’ sales summits have gone virtual. For many companies, however, it can still be a challenge to successfully pull off a digital event.
Zoom hopes to change that with its upcoming Zoom Events platform.
Zoom Events offers something for a variety of use cases – from enabling large businesses to seamlessly manage and host internal events like all-hands and sales summits and external events like user conferences, to smaller businesses and entrepreneurs who have been using OnZoom to create, host, and monetize events including fitness and cooking classes, theatrical presentations, and more. As part of the launch of Zoom Events, OnZoom, currently in Beta, will be rebranded and folded into Zoom Events, and can be either private, or searched and explored publicly.
The company sees a future for the platform that extends far beyond the pandemic. In fact, Zoom cites research showing that 80% of people believe a virtual element will continue post-pandemic, with 52% of respondents planning on enjoying both in-person and virtual events.
“It’s an exciting time to be at Zoom where the pace of innovation continues to accelerate,” said Oded Gal, chief product officer at Zoom. “We know that people are looking for flexibility in how they attend events in the future. The hybrid model is here to stay, and Zoom Events is a perfect solution for our customers who are looking to produce and host customer, company, and public events with an easy, yet powerful solution. This is another way we’re helping customers scale to meet consumer demands and the evolving virtual and hybrid landscape.”
Coinbase has announced it is closing its San Francisco office, the company’s former headquarters, in an effort to be fully decentralized.
In late February, the company announced it was transitioning to a decentralized company, going remote first. As part of the move, it relegated its existing headquarters in San Francisco to just a regular office, going HQ-free.
Coinbase is now taking the next step, with plans to close its San Francisco office altogether. Although it no longer serves as the company’s HQ, there was concern that its very existence would put undo emphasis on it and take away from the company’s decentralization efforts.
Coinbase is committed to being remote first. We announced we no longer have an HQ and as a next step, we’re closing our SF office (our former HQ) in 2022.
Closing our SF office is an important step in ensuring no office becomes an unofficial HQ and will mean career outcomes are based on capability and output rather than location. Instead, we will offer a network of smaller offices for our employees to work from if they choose to.
While many companies have transitioned to permanent remote work, Coinbase is certainly charting a unique path with its commitment to decentralized remote work.
Microsoft Teams has hit a major new milestone, boasting some 145 million daily users.
Microsoft Teams has become one of the most widely used programs in the pandemic, as business have relied on it for communication, collaboration and remote work. The software has benefited from being bundled with Microsoft 365, and has become an increasingly important part of Microsoft’s overall strategy.
Thanks to the pandemic, Teams has experienced meteoric growth. In March 2020, Teams had 44 million users, and by October the platform had passed 115 million users. According to Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper, Teams has now hit 145 million daily users.
#MicrosoftTeams now 145 million daily active users 🙏💜 – thank you to customers, partners, and team
