{
  "id": 1645417,
  "title": "How Airbnb reinvented its HR department",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/18/how-airbnb-reinvented-its-hr-department",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-08-18T05:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Fast Company",
    "slug": "fast-company",
    "url": "https://www.fastcompany.com/91587847/how-airbnb-reinvented-its-hr-department"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Airbnb's HR department underwent a significant transformation under the leadership of Mark Levy, who joined the company in 2013. When Levy arrived, the HR team was not cohesive, with several teams supporting employees in different ways and reporting to different parts of the business. Levy's mandate was to modernize the department and create something unique, based on the founders' desire to reinvent HR.\n\nTo achieve this, Levy and his team consolidated all HR functions under one roof and expanded the department's scope to include wellness and social impact, rebranding it as Employee Experience. This change sent a clear message that the HR functions should focus on enhancing employee engagement.\n\nLevy's approach differed from traditional HR practices; he emphasized a culture of cocreation, where employees were involved in designing and determining priorities and solutions to problems. For instance, when redesigning performance management, Levy engaged the head of engineering and designed a new process with the engineering team as a test group before introducing it to the entire company. This collaborative approach helped ensure that performance management created solutions that employees valued.\n\nAirbnb also introduced Ground Control, a self-organizing team of employees who focused on internal communications, employee recognition, and assessing the impact of company initiatives on employees. This approach empowered employees to play a significant role in shaping the company's culture and HR's contribution.\n\nRepositioning HR in the eyes of employees was crucial for Airbnb's success. The company demonstrated the value of HR beyond its traditional roles by involving employees in designing and owning the company culture. For example, employees helped design the physical workspace by choosing a listing from one of Airbnb's hosts and creating a living room for office meetings. This initiative helped reposition HR as more than just a department responsible for compliance and policy enforcement.\n\nAirbnb's transformation of its HR department was driven by top-level support. Levy's mandate for a unique HR approach came directly from the founders, emphasizing the importance of preserving Airbnb's mission, values, and culture as the company expanded. By being intentional about HR's role, embracing nontraditional approaches, and positioning HR effectively in the eyes of employees, Airbnb successfully reinvented its HR department and contributed to its global brand growth.",
  "summary": "“Don’t mess up the culture as we scale!” That’s the family-friendly version of what one of the founders of Airbnb told the employee experience specialist Mark Levy when he arrived at the company in 2013 and was cotasked with modernizing the human resources function. I have always admired Levy’s work from afar and, recently, I was fortunate to interview him for a deep dive into how his work at…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}