“At Intuit, we have always been consistent with how we want to lead as a company and as a leadership team, which is with utmost transparency, caring for each other. In this particular environment, though, the transition into virtual mode brought a lot of challenges, we have continued to stay connected with our teams, and it starts with leadership.”
The onset of the COVID pandemic and the subsequent virtual working challenged us in unprecedented ways – some moments required us to communicate with clarity, and others with great vulnerability, in order to move forward together.
The two-way dialogue between senior leaders and employees that we are committed to not only maintaining, but also continually deepening, helps promote transparency, engender respect, and build trust among employees at every level of our organization.
Every year, our State of the Company (SOC) tour proves to be a powerful, company-wide platform for inspiring employees. The format of the SOC is that our CEO Sasan Goodarzi travels to one location outside of Mountain View every three months and addresses the session which will be streamed to the rest of the company. This year, his visit to each site was virtual and in their respective time zones. He uses this time to address employees on the strategy and state of the business while answering questions that are top of their mind.
A microsite was created to view all of Sasan’s global SOCs, allowing for an engaging and interactive event. Apart from talking about the company’s quarterly performance and our stocks, the SOC is also a great platform for him to share updates that are always rich with information about the company’s performance and also maps out how we have fared against each of our big bets.
Building on the culture of being completely unambiguous, and handholding employees through these uncertain times, Laura Fennel, EVP, Chief People & Places Officer announced a phase wise approach for return to work and the timelines, cities and the precautionary measures were explicitly detailed in this communication.
All employees in select cities were given the flexible option of voluntary “opt-in” return to the office, starting in July 2021.
In addition to accrued vacation, regular company holidays, and “recharge days” we declared as “time off for the entire company”, specifically Nov. 25 and the last week of the calendar year, we’re extending the time off resources we have had in place through July 2021. This includes:
We heard from our tech ecosystem employees that one of the biggest barriers to being productive is having coding time interrupted by meetings. Internally, we looked at our own data, and the leadership team used these insights to come to a decision that No Meeting Afternoons were the way to go.
