One Office Week 2019

Creating space for in-person connection in a global company

In November, (almost) all HoneyBook employees from around the globe were in the same place at the same time for #OneOfficeWeek. This week was all about connecting with our people, our passion, and our purpose!

You’re probably thinking, what’s One Office? At HoneyBook, we have what we call a One Office mindset. Our goal is that everyone at HoneyBook feels like they are a part of one office, no matter where they work. This way of thinking keeps us feeling connected when we can’t physically be together.

During this jam-packed week, we spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday together in the San Francisco office and went offsite on a company retreat Thursday and Friday. Below is a day by day breakdown of the week’s adventures.

Before we get to the recap, I want to highlight the goals we had for this week. We wanted to get to know the people we work with every day, make sure everyone understands the vision, mission, and members of the company, and improve cross-functional collaboration.

Did we achieve them? Absolutely.

Overall, 97% of employees surveyed rated the week a 5 out of 5!

92% believe the connections built will help them to collaborate better

95% left the week knowing their coworkers on a deeper level

94% fully understand our vision, mission, and members

Now that we’ve had some time to come down from the high of the week, 2 months later, we’re still hearing amazing feedback and actually seeing the effects of the week in action. There’s been an improvement in cross-functional communication, and even communication within teams. For those that don’t get to work together often, we’re seeing people who previously had no relationship commenting on each other’s Slack posts. Collaboration is easier because of strengthened and new relationships and this is so important as we head into 2020. We’re looking forward to another year of close connection between all HoneyBookers, and the impact this brings!

Here’s how we spent our week together:

Monday: Kick off + Coworking + Creative Workshop

The day started with upbeat music, lots of hugs, the Support Team cooking up waffles, and a welcome from Oz Alon, our CEO. We spent the day co-working, with a break to get to know our Leadership Team over a lunchtime panel, and ended the day with a creative woodworking workshop hosted by our very own User Researcher, Nicole Wright — a woman of many talents.

Tuesday: Talks + HoneyMix Lunch

Our Head of Community, Natalie Franke, kicked things off on Tuesday with a talk about the creatives we’re building for. Next up was a panel with Jeff Crowe and Ann Shepherd, two of our board members, followed by a talk from one of our investors, Luis Valdich. We intentionally connected in pre-arranged small cross-functional groups for lunch, which we called a HoneyMix! The day ended with more co-working.

Wednesday: Member Day + Whiskey Wednesday

Wednesday was all about our HoneyBook members! We had 8 members come from across the U.S. to share their stories and brainstorm with us about the pain points of running their business. We loved connecting with them in person, especially teams who don’t get to interact with them as often as we’d like. We ended the day with a HoneyBook tradition in SF, Whiskey Wednesday.

Thursday & Friday: Camp HoneyBook

We got offsite for an overnight in Santa Cruz, a beautiful beach town about an hour and a half south of San Francisco for some much-needed downtime. It was all about fun as we hung out on the beach, competed in silly team-building activities, had a happy hour poolside at our hotel, and wrapped up the day with a talent show that left us in awe of our coworkers. We recapped all the fun we had the next day at breakfast, explored downtown Santa Cruz, and before saying goodbye to our traveling co-workers, we had one final gathering back at our office catered by our favorite lunch spot, Dumpling Time.

Check out this video for a look into Camp HoneyBook!

One Office Week was everything we hoped for, and more. We are counting down the days until we can do it again!

For those planning an event like this, here’s what the other organizers and I learned. We hope it will be helpful in your planning process.

• Enlist help! We were fortunate that many of our organizers opted into helping, using their unique superpowers. It makes the week more dynamic.
• Member Day was a huge highlight of the week for many people. Find time to connect with your customers and mission.
• The panel with our board members was super impactful. It’s valuable for a company to hear an outside perspective on what you’re doing.
• There are many things you can fit into a week like this and everyone has different ideas. Be upfront about your goals for the week, and optimize the schedule for them. We could have set better expectations around how much co-working time there would be.
• We overscheduled by having a panel to watch over lunch two of the days. Leave lunchtime free for people to take a break and connect with each other.
• Getting offsite to have fun is such an important part of a week like this. Leave work for an overnight retreat that’s all about fun.

There are many other small learnings. Feel free to connect with me if you’d like to chat.