Lyft CEO David Risher told Fortune that September will be “official return-to-office time” for Lyft employees, and expects staff to be back three days per week.
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00:00 To me, if our riders and drivers are happy,
00:02 and our team members are feeling like they're really expert
00:04 in that area and are delivering on that over and over again,
00:07 that'll be a huge success.
00:08 We're really trying to kind of over-communicate
00:11 to our employees as we go through so much change.
00:14 It was super painful.
00:21 Layoffs are awful.
00:23 I know it caused people a lot of pain.
00:24 The truth is, our pricing was a little bit too high,
00:27 and we weren't paying drivers quite enough.
00:30 And so in order for us to build a great, healthy business
00:34 and be customer-obsessed, we had to change that.
00:37 We had to lower our prices to be competitive
00:39 with where the market was,
00:40 and we had to raise what we're paying our drivers,
00:42 again, to be competitive with where the market was.
00:44 Once you do that, your next question has to be,
00:47 "How am I gonna pay for it?"
00:49 And the only way we knew how to pay for it
00:51 was to reduce our costs.
00:53 We couldn't figure out a way
00:54 to have the cost position we needed
00:57 in order to give customers, riders and drivers,
01:00 what they needed without reducing our costs,
01:02 and that meant laying people off.
01:04 We're literally calling it homecoming.
01:11 And so think about sort of that feeling
01:12 of kind of first day at school or at a new school.
01:15 We're gonna give tours and these sorts of things,
01:18 have some kind of community groups
01:20 where people can get together
01:21 and kind of talk about things
01:22 that have nothing to do with work.
01:24 We're getting book clubs set up.
01:25 All the things you try to do
01:26 to give a sense of community to work
01:27 beyond just the basics of keyboard
01:29 and a mouse and a monitor.
01:31 There are other people at the office
01:32 that in the spectrum really haven't been working
01:34 in a physical office for years.
01:37 They've got a dog walking routine
01:39 or they've got habits formed around that
01:42 that they're really honestly reluctant to give up.
01:44 And I think that what they're maybe forgetting
01:47 is how much fun it can be together.
01:49 But you learn new habits
01:50 and then you have to almost unlearn those
01:52 if you're gonna learn new habits.
01:53 So that's very much a transition.
01:55 We're, for example, allowing people to use Lyft
01:57 to come into work and actually giving people
01:59 some commuter benefits and so forth
02:01 to make their commute easier.
02:02 And my basic pitch to people is,
02:04 look, I think it's the best way for us
02:06 to create a truly customer-obsessed organization,
02:10 but I also know it's gonna take some time to get used to.
02:12 And I just ask people, give it a try.
02:14 It's gonna be super fun, I hope.
02:16 For me, it's really important
02:17 both to sort of see people face-to-face
02:19 just to build a relationship,
02:21 but also bump into people that I wouldn't bump into
02:23 on Google Meet or Zoom.
02:25 (upbeat music)
02:27 (upbeat music)