How Dropboxers are taking back the freedom to decline meetings with Core Collaboration Hours

Life-work balance has always been a priority at Dropbox. For years, we’ve offered Dropboxers remote work options, flexible working hours, and time off policies to help them customize a schedule that protects the time they need for work, family, and personal priorities.

But as a global company, that’s easier said than done. Some of our teams are stretched across multiple continents and time zones, and collaboration between people located as far apart as San Francisco, Dublin, and Japan always presented major challenges. Sometimes this resulted in Dropboxers sacrificing their sleep and taking meetings very early in the morning, or late into the night, after they’d made dinner for their family and put their kids to bed.

When the pandemic forced us to suddenly close our offices and start working from home last year, these problems became an even more critical source of attention. Some people gained time back in their day by no longer having to commute to an office, but others now faced new demands on their time to juggle, such as caring for loved ones from home. And when we made the full shift to a Virtual First work environment, there needed to be an answer that helped to standardize meeting expectations so that Dropboxers were empowered to control the rest of their schedule — and their life.

That’s how the idea of Core Collaboration Hours (CCH) was born. CCH are company-wide time blocks for synchronous (or real-time) collaborative work. Outside of this time, Dropboxers are empowered to decline meetings, and to continue to design their calendars around how and when they work best.

Here’s how it works: everyone at Dropbox gets a “home” time zone based on the region they live in. There are three “home” zones and each has corresponding CCH hours. Those are:

• Americas (NAMER) : from 9am–1pm PST
• Europe (EMEA) : from 10am-12pm and 4–6pm GMT; Tel Aviv only Sun-Thurs 12–4pm GMT+2
• Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) : from 9am-1pm GMT+9

CCH should be used for a few primary functions, including meetings for the 3Ds (debate, decision-making, discussion), 1:1s and team syncs, hashing out ideas over Slack or email, or working through a problem you’re blocked on via Zoom. After the block is over, Dropboxers can feel free to create their own schedule that best suits them. And even within this block, we recognize that CCH are practices, not unbendable rules; for some roles, hours may look a little different, and that’s okay as long as it is clearly communicated to one’s team.

There are many ways in which individual Dropboxers can structure their time around CCH. Sandra Bilbrey, a Design Manager for the Core Experience team, shared her unique approach with us. She said, “Working across several time zones, my team revamped our calendars to collaborate from 9am to 1pm PST every day. The rest of our day is reserved for focus time — although we do have a ‘flex for friends’ mentality and will have impromptu chats and 1:1s as we wish.

To keep track of my energy, I color code my calendar. The visual cues help me structure my day intentionally and prevent too much attention switching.”

“Switching to Core Collaboration Hours is all about experimentation — my weeks aren’t ever perfect, and I’m still learning when to stick to firm boundaries and when to make exceptions. Saying “no” is a skill! But I’m excited for the challenge and how it will flip our old ways of working for the better.”

As we continue to explore the definition of a Virtual First workspace, we’re excited to see how strategies like CCH make an impact in our employees’ lives. If you’re interested in seeing what working Virtual First could look like for you, you can visit our jobs page to explore opportunities.