Strategic HR HR at WeWork
Overcoming trouble
in paradise at
WeWork
Co-working unicorn WeWork has had a rough
few months. But it’s introducing HR processes
and making recruitment more strategic,
finds RACHEL SHARP
I used to
walk past
a WeWork
and I’d
see people
happy,
and dogs
running
about, and
there was
just this vibe
What a difference two months
can make. One month a
company can be riding high as the
most valuable start-up in the US.
By the end of the next its valuation
could be slashed, plans for flotation
shelved, and the CEO-founder out
the door. That’s what happened this
Summer for WeWork.
So what went wrong? It was
August when The We Company
(WeWork’s new name) filed its
hotly-anticipated IPO paperwork.
Intense scrutiny of the co-working
company’s corporate governance
and the unconventional leadership
practices of CEO Adam Neumann
quickly followed.
Reports surfaced that he had
taken $700 million out of the
company shortly before the IPO.
Rumours of eccentric behaviour
also abounded, including smoking
marijuana on private jets and
trying to become immortal. The
company’s value plummeted from
$47 billion to as low as $10 billion,
Neumann stepped down as
CEO, and plans to go public
were abandoned.
Then came the news that
WeWork’s board had accepted a
takeover plan proposed by
SoftBank Group and staff were
told to expect job cuts.
No-one saw this coming. But
perhaps they should given the
recent history of other fast-growing
tech firms. Uber’s shares have
tumbled since it went public in
May. Google’s corporate
governance was called into
question when staff staged a mass
walkout over sexual misconduct
allegations in November last year.
And Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
was summoned before UK and
Canadian parliaments in
October 2018 to answer
questions relating to the
Cambridge Analytica scandal.
So perhaps unicorns aren’t quite
as magical as they seem, with
WeWork becoming another
example of what happens when an
entrepreneurial start-up struggles
to match monumental growth with
process and good governance.
This was the topic of
conversation when HR magazine
caught up with WeWork’s senior
director of talent acquisition for
EMEA Stephanie Houston, at the
firm’s Devonshire Square coworking
space, prior to this
Summer’s events.
We heard about her role treading
this very line between retaining an
enterprising start-up culture while
introducing enough HR process to
allow the firm to grow sustainably.
Making recruitment
more strategic
“When a company is going through
a transformation there’s only so
long you can call yourself a startup,”
muses Houston. “I think I
came in at that tipping point where
you’ve got a company that still has a
start-up mindset. But when you
look at the numbers it’s not a startup;
it’s an organisation that’s
maturing and growing.”
Neumann and Miguel McKelvey
set up their first co-working space
in New York out of the belief that
people were ready for a new
approach to work based around
community. In less than 10 years it
has grown to 528 spaces across 111
cities in 29 countries, with a
527,000-strong membership.
Houston came on board in July
2018 to a brand-new role and the
task of making recruitment more
28 HR November 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk
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