The Future of Work at LiveRamp: What We’re Learning & What’s Next

While the pandemic is not yet behind us, our LiveRamp team learned so much in the 100 days since we shared the three design principles we’re using to guide our future of work strategy: 1) start with your beliefs; 2) decide what you’re solving for, and for whom; and 3) build—and rebuild—with a product management mindset. Using this same framework, we’re excited to share our current thinking on what work at LiveRamp will be like in the months and years ahead.

1. We believe that the future of work is flexible and predictable—a chance to grow, belong, and get stuff done like never before.

Our perspective on the future of work comes from three sources: Our values, the perspectives of our employees (LiveRampers), and the nature of the work we do with our customers. Taken together, these data make clear that we are in the middle of a genuine workplace renaissance. Our opportunity—as with many organizations’—is massive: A chance to redefine and up-level purpose, productivity, and belonging at work.?

2. We’re solving for all of our stakeholders—customers and communities included.?

In designing LiveRamp’s future of work model, we considered the needs of two core stakeholders groups: our 1,200 employees worldwide, and our 825+ enterprise-level customers. We also took into account community and environmental considerations, outlined most recently in our inaugural ESG Report.

Surveys, focus groups, benchmarking, one-on-one conversations—we’ve used every available method to understand our employee and customer perspectives. And we’ll keep listening. Yet even now, what we’re learning gives us a clear signal around four principles—the big ideas we’re solving for with our future of work effort:

• Flexibility | In the spirit of our value, “We empower people,” LiveRampers will have greater degrees of choice around how, when, and where they work. The specific types and degrees of flexibility are customized by each function’s leadership, based on input from their team and customers.
• Predictability | We know that flexibility is especially powerful when balanced with predictability around how, when, and where our teammates are working. And for our customers, we remain focused on delivering predictability in every sense: how our solutions work, how well they work, and who from LiveRamp you can count on for help.
• Belonging | Having a sense of belonging is fundamental to being our best selves. As LiveRamp becomes more global, it’s important that everything we create—from employee onboarding materials to client-facing products—be accessible and exceptional for all stakeholders.
• Getting Stuff Done (GSD) | Many LiveRampers tell us that the last year has been the most productive of their careers, yet also one that has tested our ability to stay connected and sustain our effort over time. We’re distilling all that we’ve learned about how to “get stuff done” into updated norms, tools, practices, and trainings.

3. We’re building a future of work that accounts for where and how work (and life) happens.

To make this all real, our future of work plan calls for meaningful updates to where and how we work. Specifically:

Where work happens: flexibility and predictability

At LiveRamp, physical spaces where people can come together still matter—and 90% of LiveRampers tell us they value regular access to an office. LiveRamp is therefore keeping its global offices and is opening several new sites, including our new location in Phoenix, Arizona.

In many cases, the role of the office will evolve to be more focused on collaboration, ideation, and social gatherings, the idea being that people in many roles will be able to work brilliantly from anywhere.?

Practically-speaking, employee survey data tell us that most LiveRampers want to live within commuting distance of a LiveRamp office and come to the office between 2-3 days per week. To support this, teams will have dedicated “neighborhoods” in each office— predictable spaces set up for each team on a team-determined cadence. Specific office presence norms are also being set by each team.

We’ve also given LiveRampers the opportunity to apply for permanent remote work. While we haven’t had massive interest in this model so far, we know that this option is meaningful for the 5% of LiveRampers who’ve already expressed interest in “going remote.”

Finally, for those working from home at least two days each week, we’ll continue to offer our Ramp Remote home office equipment and ergonomics program to make sure LiveRampers can stay healthy, connected, and productive in our home offices.

How work happens: distributed, effective, inclusive

During the onset of the pandemic, shelter-in-place challenged us to first think about how to simply stay connected—and ultimately inspired us to find ways to grow collaboration and inclusion well beyond our pre-pandemic reality. And we’ve learned immensely. No matter where LiveRampers work, we should each feel connected to our teams and have the knowledge and tools to be brilliant.?

A true shift in how we work will be the sum of more than new tools, but also fresh mindsets and norms. To help with this, our Getting Stuff Done at LiveRamp program (GSD@) streamlines our most useful tools and resources—some new, some tried-and-true. It includes our wellness guide for managers and teams, our “ultimate guide to effective meetings,” and many more. The GSD@ program has been in beta since spring 2021 and goes into general release this fall, with all resources available to all LiveRampers.?

As we move into this next phase of work at LiveRamp, we recognize that this transition is an agile process. We remain open to fresh inputs and ideas. Yet even amidst the uncertainty, we believe that we’re on the cusp of a truly new way of working—one with the potential to be more impactful and inclusive than ever.?