Airbnb is one of the most prominent technology startups to emerge in the past decade and has rapidly become a major force in the global travel industry. Since its founding in 2008, it claims more than 4 million listings, in over 65,000 cities, and 191 countries worldwide.
Airbnb has experienced rapid growth in its first decade by expanding its bookings and revenues as well as its global footprint. This challenge translated internally as well – how do you ensure that more than 4000 colleagues around the world are equipped with the right skills to compete, lead, and deliver a powerful experience to their clients?
The learning team needed a model that reflected how they actually learn—consuming information on the fly, in dedicated bursts of attention, and on their own schedule. And they targeted managers first.
Amplify: Developing Leadership
As Airbnb’s learning team empowered employees to rapidly find critical information, they also kicked off a new program called Amplify to create a leadership development program at no extra cost.
The approach is built upon what the learning team knows about how people really learn and put skills into practice, particularly in a hypergrowth environment. Airbnb is in the process of rolling out the program to more than 700 globally dispersed managers—nearly a fifth of the workforce—at a fraction of the cost of traditional programs.
“A lot of the feedback that we get from people who go through Amplify is they love the fact that they can do this whenever and however it suits them, and that it’s not mandatory for them to be in a location for a good chunk of time—particularly people who are more reflective in their learning style,” says Barry Murphy, global learning lead at Airbnb.
Want to know the six core people leadership behaviors Airbnb is targeting or the structure of the training inside the Amplify program? Barry will take the stage at Degreed LENS next Thursday to share how they created the program, and there are still a few (10 to be exact) tickets remaining.
Join us before it’s too late!