Shopify never shies away from setting trends for e-commerce and corporates in general. Recently, Chief Executive Officer Tobi Lutke said in an interview that Shopify is planning to get rid of unnecessary team meetings so that employees can focus on work. Calling this “calendar purge“, Shopify aims to cut recurring meetings and wants its employees to leave large internal chat groups.
We know no one joined Shopify to sit in meetings.
Kaz Nejatian, Vice president of product and chief operating officer, Shopify
While just concluded 2022 saw Shopify cut costs, this year the Canadian e-commerce giant is cutting meetings. In the rule, it states that no recurring meetings are allowed between more than two employees, no meetings at all on Wednesdays and only one meeting of over 50 employees is allowed in a six-hour window on Thursdays.
“The best thing founders can do is subtraction,” CEO Lutke said as quoted by Bloomberg.
“It’s much easier to add things than to remove things. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done with that period of time. As people add things, the set of things that can be done becomes smaller. Then, you end up with more and more people just maintaining the status quo,” he added.
Meetings in Corporate Culture
In corporate companies, long meetings involving too many people hinder productivity and disturb today’s hybrid work culture. Apart from Shopify, companies like Facebook’s Meta Platforms Inc., tech firm Twilio Inc. and food company Clorox Co. have set days for no meetings at all.
Bloomberg cited a survey from the last year, claiming that on average, corporate employees spend 18 hours a week in meetings. The sample employees said they declined only 14 percent of meetings while they wanted to avoid 31 percent of them. The survey concluded that unproductive long meetings cost about $100 million a year.
Psychological Effect
Steven Rogelberg, a management and psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, spoke of how unproductive meetings disappoint employees to the level that they intend to quit. Data based on thousands of Microsoft Corp. employees claim that the time of meetings tripled in two years after the pandemic hit in 2020. Weekly meetings doubled in these two years, the data added.
Talking about teleconferencing between two employees, another research claimed that these meetings rose from 17 percent in 2020 to 42 percent in 2021. This study was based on 48 million meetings and conducted by collaboration analytics firm Vyopta.
Implementation of New Rule
Shopify has also placed a bot to ensure cutting meetings by reminding organizers about new rules, which came into effect on January 5.
“Over the years, we’ve seen excess meetings creep back into our day to day,” Kaz Nejatian, Shopify’s vice president of product and chief operating officer, told Bloomberg.
“We know no one joined Shopify to sit in meetings,” Nejatian added.
Shopify’s Bold Vision
This is not the first time that Shopify announced a bold workforce experiment. The Canadian company was one of the biggest tech companies that announced work from home. CEO Lutke had then called Shopify a “digital by default” company.
“As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over,” reads his tweet from May 21, 2020.
As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.
— tobi lutke (@tobi) May 21, 2020
In September, Shopify announced Flex Comp, a flexible compensation to reward talent working for the company. It challenges the norms set by tech companies worldwide, though Shopify believes that its rewritten story of compensation will inspire other giants to follow Flex Comp.
The prime aspect of Flex Comp is that employees can decide if they want to get paid in cash (the conventional way) or in equity. “Bringing agency to our people was a foundational principle for our build. Why should a company decide for you how much of your total reward should be in the form of cash vs equity? This makes no sense. Now, our employees can choose exactly how they want to allocate their total reward.”
Remote-first Company
In December, Shopify abandoned its plan to move to the newly built 254,000-square-foot space at The Well. The Canadian e-commerce giant clarified that the sudden change of plans is not caused by increased expenses but because of its remote-first approach.
“We have a bold vision for the future of work at Shopify, and are no longer a workforce that centres around a physical workplace for day-to-day work,” Shopify spokesperson Alex Lyons told Toronto Star in an email interview.
“We recently made the decision not to move forward with developing a new office space at The Well. Shopify continues to value highly intentional, in-person gatherings, and will continue to do so at our primary Toronto space located at King Portland Centre, with plans to further develop and expand into one central space to accommodate our needs,” Lyons added.
Extraordinary People at Work
Later in the same month, Shopify invited extraordinary people from all walks of life by offering VIP Access on its careers page. After the evaluation of submitted profiles, Shopify will make exceptions and create specific jobs beyond the conventional roles.
VIP Access is a career platform for the world’s best talent. Shopify wants these extraordinary people to join the company and “apply their extraordinary ability” to its mission.
“Of course, everyone we hire is exceptional at what they do. However, folks who get VIP access are extraordinary, often globally unrivalled in their skills and experience, and world-class at something beyond the roles we already hire for,” Shopify states.
“From astrophysicists and Reddit influencers to pro gamers and Olympic athletes, we welcome extraordinary people and make exceptions for them. If you’re world-class, we’ll fast-track you through our application process and create you a new high-performance role—and personal growth trajectory,” it explains further.
Learning From The Last Year
Last year, Shopify saw a lot of ups and downs, out of which the 10 percent workforce layoff hurt the company’s ambitions the most. Shopify’s shares plummeted 75 percent after CEO Lutke admitted an overestimated bet on e-commerce rise didn’t pay off.
ALSO READ: 2022 Recap: 6 Biggest Shopify Events That Made News This Year
“It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off. What we see now is the mix reverting to roughly where pre-Covid data would have suggested it should be at this point. Still growing steadily, but it wasn’t a meaningful 5-year leap ahead. Our market share in ecommerce is a lot higher than it is in retail, so this matters. Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong. Now, we have to adjust. As a consequence, we have to say goodbye to some of you today and I’m deeply sorry for that,” he said on news.shopify.com
Now with lesser meetings, Shopify aims to boost productivity and reduce stress on employees. According to Shopify, employees are allowed to reconvene a canceled meeting in a “two-week cooling off period”. Discouraging informal meetings and internal chat groups, Shopify asked its employees to communicate only through Slack.
