Working From Home

9Creating the High‐Performance Remote Work Culture

Twitter made global headlines when CEO Jack Dorsey announced that all employees could work from home, forever (https://bit.ly/wfh-twitterannouncement). On a Friday afternoon, just prior to the announcement, James Loduca was brought in to develop a playbook that would be used globally for the company's 5,300 employees. The announcement that working from home would be permanent, if employees wanted it, was made on the following Monday. Loduca is the Director of Global Inclusion and Diversity at Twitter; I caught up with him via video call in his San Francisco home office.

Loduca, in a black T‐shirt that matches the color of his glasses, is petting a penguin. Actually, several penguins, on the gray onesie his 10‐week‐old son is wearing. Baby Gus (and his adorable onesie) are being held and bounced as Loduca explains Twitter's transition to a work‐from‐home culture.

“We're really fortunate in that Twitter decided long ago that the future of work was distributed. Our mission is to enable anyone, anywhere, to work for Twitter, which is really at its core about decentralization, diversity, and inclusion. The study of Tweeps' needs for working from home,” he says, referencing the company's name for its employees, “had been completed before the pandemic. So it wasn't like we were starting from scratch.”

James kick‐started the company's new initiative with some deep listening to employees.

When you want to work out what a work‐from‐home ...