At Drizly, Remote Work Offers More Diverse Opportunities

For many, remote work has become synonymous with challenging working environments. From Zoom fatigue and poor internet connections to unexpectedly having to navigate home-schooling, there are countless roadblocks people have learned to expect while working remotely over the past year or so.

Yet if you ask the Drizly team what they think about remote work, they’ll tell you that not only has it been bearable, it’s provided them meaningful opportunities to improve efforts that increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and connection with it’s team.

For the organization, which declared itself remote-first while leaning into a hybrid working model, the benefits of having distributed teams are obvious. According to Drizly Leadership Development Partner Kimberly Bringas, gaining greater access to talent from across the country played a pivotal role in the company’s decision to transition into the remote-work world.

BRINGING THE BEV TO YOU

As the world’s largest alcohol marketplace, Drizly enables consumers to order beer, wine and spirits to be delivered to their doorsteps in a matter of minutes. Partnering with retailers in more than 1,300 cities across North America, the beverage-delivery service announced its plans to be acquired by Uber earlier this year.

But having a remote workforce also made the company reconsider the ways in which employees perform on a daily basis.

“There was a strong focus on making sure that employees were getting access to the tools and resources they needed to do their best work,” said Director of HR Kristina Buzzo.

As the company took a closer look at the ways in which its people operated during the pandemic, the team decided to revamp its approach to leadership, hiring and culture in general.

Drizly company office

A New Look at Leadership

If there is one thing that strong teams have in common, it’s a steadfast set of leaders. At Drizly, building out a powerful executive team became a focal point during the pandemic.

It was a move that Bringas called “an investment in expertise,” echoing the company’s commitment to protecting its greatest asset: its people. In fact, Bringas’ role is a testament to the company’s leadership transformation.

When Bringas was brought onto the team earlier this year, she immediately went to work helping the company’s leaders scale their skills in order to keep up with their growing teams.

INSIDE DRIZLY’S HYBRID APPROACH

Considering how the complexities and challenges of the pandemic continue to inject uncertainty into the lives of many, Drizly wants to offer its employees a much-needed sense of stability, according to Bringas. That means employees can choose to work entirely remotely or go into their Denver and Boston offices on a flexible basis. But that’s not all the company is doing to support its people. Buzzo added that the organization is working hard to make sure employees have the resources they need to succeed remotely. “We're trying to define what processes, policies, tools and best practices are going to make us work most efficiently in this remote-first culture,” Buzzo said. “Our top priority is making sure that we create an equitable environment, regardless of where employees live.”

Buzzo joined the company around the same time as Bringas, and like her, was impressed by the team’s focus on refining its people-first approach on an even broader scale.

“We really doubled down in terms of providing our teams greater flexibility, so we began allowing them to set their own work schedules and granted them more heads-down time,” Buzzo said.

For Director of Engineering Bill Desmarais, leading a remote team required him to make a variety of practical changes. For instance, his team put an asynchronous spin on Agile ceremonies, turning the scrum sprint meetings into Slack conversations rather than blocked-out times that may not align with each person’s schedule.

“The goal is to accommodate people all over the country and make sure everybody is on the same page on a daily basis, which is the most important thing,” Desmarais said.

According to Desmarais, Drizly’s leadership team was deliberate when cultivating the company’s culture. He credits them with bringing the organization’s dreams of diversity and inclusion to life, despite the complexities of a distributed workforce.

“Our leaders are so intentional and thoughtful about everything we put into place,” Desmarais said. “The way our people team in particular goes about shaping our culture is just something that continually blows me away.”

Drizly virtual team

A Better Way to Hire

While the Drizly team prioritized making sure leaders acclimated to the remote-work era over the past year, they were also sure to amplify the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

And what’s the best way to diversify a workforce? Start with intentionality, set aggressive goals and constantly measure your progress.

According to Buzzo, one of the first decisions their leaders made was to ask candidates to remove all identifying information from their resumes as a way to minimize implicit bias. Since this decision went into effect, the company has welcomed three women to its leadership team.

“I think we’ve seen awesome results from this effort so far,” Buzzo said.

DIVERSITY BY THE NUMBERS

In addition to a bi-annual engagement survey, the Drizly team publishes a yearly IDEA report, which covers diversity, equity, inclusion and action. From a statistical standpoint, the company has witnessed a 3 to 4 percent increase in representation from people included in the LGBTQ+, caretaker and differently-abled communities. According to Bringas, the team will continue to take a data-driven approach to rounding out their inclusion efforts. “We'd like to leverage our data to figure out where we need to pay closer attention as we scale,” Bringas said. “Creating those touch points is critical.”

Working alongside the team, Bringas has created ways to help them gauge remote readiness during the candidate screening process in a way that doesn’t penalize people who don’t have as much remote-work experience. In doing so, the team can get a feel for candidates’ preferred work environment and expose them to remote-work practices earlier on.

Drizly company office

The Positive Impact of Inclusion

A focus on inclusion has changed Drizly’s remote culture in many ways. While it’s improved their recruitment process and remote-work practices, inclusion has also helped employees feel more connected to their peers, regardless of where they live.

Considering Buzzo joined the team remotely earlier this year, you might assume it was challenging for her to forge connections with her coworkers. Yet she said the opposite was true.

“As soon as I joined, everyone was so warm and welcoming and willing to hop on calls to provide support with tasks I was working on,” Buzzo said.

Our leaders are so intentional and thoughtful about everything we put into place.”

While Drizly’s community-focused culture left a lasting impression on Buzzo, she said her most memorable experience with the company so far occurred in April. In honor of Alcohol Awareness Month, the company hosted a virtual panel of team members who shared their experiences with loved ones struggling with alcohol addiction. The event allowed her to connect with peers who had many different backgrounds and experiences. In Buzzo’s mind, the company’s decision to host the panel exemplified its commitment to its people.

“When you show up to work every day, you don't really know what’s going on in people’s personal lives,” Buzzo said. “This initiative is just one example of how Drizly provides a safe, inclusive environment that allows employees to form close connections.”

SPARKING CHANGE FOR OTHERS

While Desmarais has played a large role in helping attract diverse talent, that’s not the only thing he’s done to make an impact in the organization. He and some of his peers work with an organization called Resilient Coders, which teaches young people from underserved communities how to code. Desmarais has helped bring some of their graduates into the company, offering them support along the way, which he said has been “hugely gratifying.”

Bringas said she has been especially touched by the company’s focus on promoting inclusion through education. According to her, the organization offers its employees ample opportunities to learn from each other.

In addition to hosting a virtual series of events dedicated to International Women’s Month, the company hosted a gender and nonbinary workshop, which helped Bringas gain a deeper understanding of gender identity and offer greater support to her peers.

“Investing in these types of educational opportunities will really drive inclusion and help people engage with each other and feel seen,” Bringas said. “It's incredibly powerful.”