How Yelp is using ERGs to foster connections between remote employees

When it comes to efforts that help promote diverse representation, Yelp is giving remote work five out of five stars.

Last week, the reviews platform released an updated D&I report, highlighting the strides it’s made on DEI initiatives since shuttering its offices and becoming a fully remote company. Though many CHROs lament the employee connectivity crisis due to a dispersed workforce, Yelp says cutting ties to a physical office location has forced employees to connect with employees from differing backgrounds, who they likely wouldn’t have interacted with in an in-person setting. 

“We now have an opportunity to get to many more employees much more often,” says Miriam Warren, Yelp’s chief diversity officer. Her team is taking full advantage of technology to boost engagement, albeit virtually. The company launched three new employee resource groups (ERGs) in the past quarter alone, bringing its total to 22. 

“Before March 2020, Yelpers mostly worked in the U.S. Out of five major offices. They went to an office daily, which meant that our ERG programming was very focused on a particular place,” she says. “The voices we can hear now are much richer because we’re hearing from them much more regularly.”

The move to fully remote work also required new training for managers on sourcing talent beyond geographical barriers.

“The recruiting team and hiring managers are looking at places that maybe they’ve never been to [or] don’t know much about, and we’re helping them to see that diversity in the U.S. Is everywhere, but it is not as obvious everywhere,” she says. The company has since launched three DEI-focused workshops focused on topics like intersectionality, inclusive language, and understanding cultural differences in the workplace.

Going fully remote has also translated into engagement at the company. Warren says attrition has generally held steady within the company. And anecdotally, she’s observed a rise in the number of boomerang employees. 

“We know this number is much higher than it’s ever been,” she says of boomerang workers.

On the diversity front, there’s still room for progress. Yelp’s gender diversity has remained consistent at around 43% women globally over the past two years, and its ethnic diversity in the U.S. Has also remained relatively stagnant. However, it’s closer to U.S. Representation numbers than many of Yelp’s tech peers. Black and Latinx employees accounted for 12.7% and 12.6% respectively in 2021, down from about 13% in 2020 for both demographics. 

“What continues to be a challenge for us, and I would imagine many organizations, is seeing diversity from the bottom all the way to the top and everywhere in between,” says Warren. “We have continued to see that gap. [But] it is closing.”

For Warren, meeting people where they’re at—literally—is a forward-moving step to attract and hire more diversely. The company’s remote policy, she says, is now one of the biggest draws for prospective employees.

“We’re trying to make Yelp a place that is diverse and inclusive,” Warren says. “If you can do [that], you have a shot at something that is really tough to do in a culture, which is to create a place where people feel in good times, but also in contentious times, ‘I belong here.’”

Amber Burton
[email protected]
@amberbburton

Reporter's Notebook

The most compelling data, quotes, and insights from the field.

Don't blame remote and hybrid work for employees' onslaught of poor mental health, says Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, in a commentary for Coins2Day published yesterday. Many assume dispersed work "leads to a sense of social isolation, meaninglessness, and lack of work-life boundaries," he writes. But that's misleading. Employers should equally scrutinize office-centric work and set more explicit boundaries and expectations for their employees.

By doing so, he writes, "you'll address the biggest well-being challenge for remote and hybrid workers: work-life boundaries."

Around the Table

- Banks with more women in leadership roles are less likely to lend money to companies that harm the environment, according to a study from the European Central Bank. Bloomberg

- Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sees labor unions as interlopers in the company’s relationship with its frontline workers. Stopping them, he says, is a matter of restoring the “soul of the company.” Washington Post

- Employees who stay at the same company their entire careers do so because their company is large enough to meet all their career ambitions, or they’re comfortable occupying a niche role until retirement. BBC

- The Fed’s recent attempts to weaken the labor market are already working—just not equally across sectors. While some industries are slowing down hiring, others are thriving. CNN

- On Fast Company’s Ambition Diaries podcast, mothers and daughters talk about the evolution of workplace discrimination throughout their respective careers. Listen time: 21 minutes. Fast Company

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Coins2Day. 

Invasion of privacy. A remote employee in the Netherlands won a court case against a Florida-based company after his employer fired him for refusing to keep his camera on eight hours a day. —Alice Hearing

WFH woes. Remote workers are more likely to stress about money, according to a survey from MetLife. In the study, 53% of fully remote workers said they were at a “financial breaking point,” compared to only 41% of hybrid and in-person workers. —Chloe Berger

More train strikes. The third largest railroad union in the country rejected a labor agreement that included wage increases, claiming that the new contract doesn't address worker concerns about sufficient paid time off. —Josh Funk