Virtual First 2024: A year of learning and innovation

1. Focus on the intention

In-person time is valuable—but only when planned with intention. We found that organizations see the biggest impact when they design gatherings around clear goals.

In-person gatherings offer invaluable opportunities for collaboration and connection. However, these gatherings require a significant investment of time and energy. In 2024, we set out to figure out which ways of gathering have the biggest impact on trust, innovation, and execution.

Our research on in-person connection showed that different formats favor different purposes:

• Traditional offsites (focused on strategy and team-building) strengthen trust and improve decision-making.
• Retreats (immersive, inspiring experiences) spark innovation and deepen team cohesion.
• Coworking (collaborative working sessions) accelerate progress and help teams execute efficiently. 

We also learned that you can drive better business outcomes by being intentional about who you’re gathering with and for what purpose. The right group size and mix can make all the difference. For example:

• In gatherings for immediate teams, 92% reported stronger trust, 85% improved communication, and 63% tackled complex challenges more effectively. 
• For cross-functional gatherings, 75% felt increased trust and 73% saw improved communication, but these gatherings weren’t best for skill-building. 
• In leadership gatherings, 79% felt these gatherings were effective at building trust and 52% reported working through a challenge, but they were less effective at making progress against specific projects.

Based on these insights, we created a “gathering matrix”—a simple framework that aligns business objectives with the right format (offsite, retreat, coworking) and audience (team, cross-functional partners, leadership) to achieve a desired goal. This removes the guesswork, making it easy to design gatherings that drive real outcomes. We’ll be sharing more on this soon.

Reframing beliefs around gathering

Instead of prioritizing office attendance, define the objectives behind bringing people together: Are you fostering trust? Driving innovation? Making a key decision? Decide whether your goals are best achieved in-person or virtually, and how often you need to gather. Finally, ask yourself which teams need to come together to make the most progress.

For team leads looking to design gatherings, explore our Virtual First Toolkit for best practices, including:

• Maintain productivity in-person
• Accelerate trust with offsites
• Protect your energy in-person
• Hosting a collaborative offsite

2. Reimagine support systems for distributed teams

Traditional workplace support systems were designed for a traditional office—we rebuilt ours to streamline planning and reduce friction while operating in Virtual First.

Planning in-person gatherings involves complex coordination across travel, learning and development, and workplace teams. Through our research, we found this was leading to silos and planning inefficiencies and was shifting focus away from the gathering experience itself. 

To address this, we piloted the Offsite Planning Team (OPT), a concierge model that merges all relevant support functions into one service. It’s a one-stop-shop for any teams who need end-to-end offsite planning support. 

Our OPT helped Dropbox employees reduce time spent planning offsites by 30% in 2024. By saving time, the team allows managers to focus on critical priorities and designing meaningful gatherings, rather than dealing with internal processes. Not only does the OPT eliminate logistical barriers; it also optimizes the overall experience by curating gatherings to each team’s objectives.

We also created self-service versions of the concierge team, including resources like “Offsite in a Box.” This end-to-end resource provides practical guidance on planning and executing gatherings with curated playbooks, budgeting templates, and more. The open-source “Offsite in a Box” allows employees to easily access the same planning playbooks used by the OPT if they prefer to self-plan.

Nearly every gathering led to key business achievements and earned positive feedback. Here are the results:

• 99% of gatherings resulted in at least one positive business outcome
• 98% of planners reported satisfaction with OPT support
• 95% of employees rated their offsite experience positively
• 95% of planners found the self-service resources valuable
• 71% of participants said their team connections grew stronger

Building sustainable ways to support gathering

Based on our OPT, here are a few ways to support gatherings for distributed teams:

• Think long-term: Develop a multi-year roadmap structured with incremental improvements—rather than quick fixes—that ladder up to big goals. Breaking down attainable milestones over time allows you to track progress more clearly with data and key results metrics.
• Set meaningful metrics: Focus on tangible outcomes like time saved, business impact, and employee satisfaction.
• Track and adapt: Use regular reports and data, like post-gathering surveys, employee engagement insights, and real-time team feedback to refine strategies and stay agile.
• Stay connected: Regular check-ins with cross-functional stakeholders and leadership ensure consistent alignment and proactively address emerging challenges.
• Embrace experimentation: Pilot support models, gather feedback, and iterate for continuous improvement.

3. Improve collaboration to bridge digital divides

Cross-functional collaboration is vital for distributed work. This means keeping teams in sync, virtually and in-person.

Virtual collaboration

We took a closer look at collaboration patterns across the company and discovered several nuances that inform effectiveness. While immediate teams collaborate effectively, our surveys showed that there was more friction when working virtually with cross-functional partners. 

In particular, communication can break down when introducing more teams and layers into work:

• 74% of immediate teams vs. 56% of cross-functional teams feel effective in async communication
• 69% of immediate teams vs. 39% of cross-functional teams get prompt responses
• 65% of immediate teams vs. 44% of cross-functional teams respect working hours

We wanted to better understand why this break down happens, so we conducted more research on collaboration. We found that managers struggle most with this issue, often due to ineffective meeting practices, like inconsistent note-taking or unclear action items.

To bridge the gap and overcome these obstacles, we introduced a series of pilots and tools for improving collaboration across teams:

• Calendar blocking: By strategically blocking time for alignment between meetings, employees were able to leverage live collaboration hours and meeting time more effectively. These buffer blocks allow distributed teams—who may be working across different time zones—to collaborate asynchronously, yet still align in ways that enable them to make quick decisions on urgent deliverables. Employees who block their calendars also say they can get and share information faster.
• Async documentation: By replacing a routine meeting with a centralized document for asynchronous collaboration, participants can streamline communication and cut down meeting overload. In fact, 60% of pilot participants successfully transitioned at least one meeting to async and used the document as part of their central project hub.

Employees who participated in these collaboration pilots reported increased clarity, fewer scheduling conflicts, and better alignment on shared objectives. As a result of these findings, we enhanced our guidance on effective cross-functional collaboration and utilized our Virtual First Toolkit to share relevant tips and tricks, including:

• Meet with a documented agenda
• Set your pre-meeting up for success
• Write notes for action
• Prepare with a pre-read
• Increase focus through stronger writing
• Write with brevity

In-person collaboration

In addition to virtual collaboration, our teams expressed a desire for more in-person time with cross-functional partners in order to build trust and move faster on deliverables. However, competing priorities and different operational rhythms were major obstacles for managers. 

To optimize in-person cross-functional collaboration and connection, we established:

• A company-wide offsite calendar that provides visibility into all offsites and events happening across the company. This tool makes it easier for cross-functional teams to sync in person or coordinate their respective offsites for more collaboration opportunities.
• Anchor Weeks, which bring cross-functional teams together in-person for structured collaboration, leadership exposure, and project sprints. We piloted five Anchor Weeks in 2024, and 98% of participants said these events strengthened their team connections and collaboration. Because of their success, Anchor Weeks are now an official part of how we work in 2025.

Supporting strong collaboration with human-centered design

Putting people first helps teams work better by encouraging open feedback and ideas. For a more human-centered approach to collaborating, we recommend:

• Refining virtual collaboration practices with agendas, note-taking protocols, and shared calendars.
• Designing cross-functional gatherings with clear objectives while leaving room for organic collaboration. 
• Implementing scalable, self-serve solutions to keep distributed teams connected.
• Turning your learnings into simple practices and toolkits that employees can benefit from.

For more resources, explore our Effectiveness and Teamwork toolkits for guidance around effective virtual and in-person collaboration across teams.

4. Personal agency fuels success in distributed work

Autonomy is the new currency of modern work. When employees own their schedules with intention, their focus and well-being soar.

Working effectively in Virtual First—or any remote-first environment—requires effort. This includes practices like using calendars to communicate availability, facilitating effective async communication, and coordinating across time zones. 

For knowledge workers, taking ownership, staying proactive, and working independently are key to thriving in a remote environment. This can mean taking the initiative to address issues rather than waiting for direction, embracing async work by maintaining clear boundaries, and taking breaks when needed to recharge. And the payoff is clear—90% of Dropbox employees name Virtual First as a top reason for staying at Dropbox, and 93% report flexibility as the key factor.

Our research also indicates a distinct connection between personal agency and performance. When managers feel empowered to lead high-impact teams, they set clear expectations, adapt to team dynamics, and champion flexible schedules. At Dropbox, top performers stand out by documenting effectively, communicating clearly, and taking initiative.

We also found that many of our highest performers rely on a few key strategies to maximize their impact:

• 83% of Dropbox employees design their schedules in ways that work best for them and create nonlinear workdays
• 78% block out focus time in windows for deep work, reserving other time for live collaboration
• 76% take essential breaks to recharge and boost efficiency for better performance

For our engineers specifically, we studied their autonomy and how they optimize their time for impact. 69% of engineers reported higher satisfaction by batching similar tasks and aligning complex work with their peak energy. But last-minute meetings and scheduling outside of core collaboration hours still make it hard for some to maintain strong boundaries.

While most employees feel a strong sense of personal agency, some struggle to maintain healthy boundaries. We dug deeper into when employees experience that sense of agency—and when they don’t:

• Movement: Many employees find it tough to stay active during the workday. To help, we launched a pilot encouraging movement to meetings. As a result, participant satisfaction with physical activity jumped from 47% to 79%, 92% felt more energized, and 67% reported less Zoom fatigue.
• Disconnecting outside of work hours: Some employees found it challenging to fully unplug at the end of the workday. In response, we leaned on Reclaim.ai, an intelligent scheduling tool designed to optimize productivity and time management.

Strengthening the personal agency muscle

Here are a few ways we recommend doing this:

• Show don’t tell—let your calendar communicate availability while guarding offline time. Leverage tools like Reclaim.ai to help take back control of valuable time. 
• Experiment with setting strong boundaries—unplug outside core collaboration hours and notice any improvements in focus and well-being. 
• Use tools like Dropbox Dash—a universal search tool—to quickly find the information you need across various platforms, so you can focus more on your work.
• For managers and leaders, give employees the freedom to do their best work, whatever that looks like to them. The learn to unlearn practice can help unveil what habits might be holding teams back from being successful in distributed work.
• Recognize energy patterns and build a schedule that complements your personal operating rhythms. Regular check-ins on energy levels help keep distributed teams operating at their best. 

Pioneering tomorrow's workplace, today

The modern workplace will continue to evolve, and we recognize there is no single operating model that works for every organization. But one thing is crystal clear: companies that combine flexibility with intentional practices will own the future of work.

Thanks to our Virtual First working model, we understand that the future of work is constantly evolving. By rethinking how teams connect, collaborate, and work independently, we’ve found new ways to move forward.

As a laboratory for distributed work, we're energized by the possibilities ahead. Our successes, challenges, and breakthroughs all contribute to a growing playbook for the future of work—one we're excited to share as we go.