Meta may soon play a larger role in your workplace than you ever expected. In an unlikely alliance, the social media giant has partnered with Microsoft to integrate tools including Teams, Windows, and Office to a premier version of the headset formerly known as Oculus: Quest Pro.

“With Windows 365 coming to Quest, you’ll have a new way to securely stream the entire Windows experience, including all the personalized apps, content, and settings to your VR device,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at an October 11 launch event. In other words: Employees will be able to work on multiple projects and interact with distributed colleagues unlike ever before.

Friend, not foe. Microsoft and Meta were competitors until last year, but the former’s AR HoloLens headset has been all but phased out. This is the first time the companies have partnered in over a decade, according to The Verge, seemingly in the interest of driving workplace adoption of VR and AR. While Microsoft has been omnipresent in the working world for decades, Facebook is a relative newcomer, having entered the space in 2016.

“Microsoft is among the biggest players in all of work technology. To see their commitment to investing more in XR [extended reality] is great for the medium, and should help further build and accelerate the foundation for the further adoption of enterprise VR,” Jeremy Bailenson, co-founder of VR training company Strivr and founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, told HR Brew via email.

Slow and steady. Corporate adoption of VR solutions has been gradual, even amid the proliferation of remote and hybrid work that has left many leaders concerned about collaboration and innovation. Lack of user familiarity with the technology and insufficient software have both been barriers, and Meta has faced its own challenges getting the metaverse off the ground. Keep reading here.—AK

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As Airbnb’s CFO, Dave Stephenson’s job boils down to making sure the company gets a good return on its investments—the biggest of which, he told HR Brew, is its people. Put that way, he doesn’t think it at all strange that as the head of finance, he’s also tasked with managing employee experience.

“[As] the head of employee experience, we’re investing in people to unlock the best of their talent and capability,” he said.

Stephenson has had to make some tough calls: In 2020, for example, he led a company-wide restructuring, including layoffs of 25% of the workforce as the pandemic disrupted travel. Since then, however, he’s helped guide Airbnb into the future, rolling out its “live and work anywhere” program last spring, which drove 800,000 applicants to the career page within the first week and has been adopted by 11% of its US workforce.

We talked with Stephenson about how he’s approached employee-experience decisions—both the good and the bad—to understand where the company is today and where he thinks it’s headed.

This interview has been edited lightly for clarity.

Right now, the work-from-anywhere program is largely limited to domestic jobs—why was that an important caveat?

[It] is important because we still want people largely working in similar time zones with similar responsibilities, and the constraints for working within a country are much different than trying to get work authorization for a long period of time in other countries. We actually created a whole team—[who] we call the live-and-work-anywhere team—to help navigate all of these things [including] work visas, tax obligations, and supporting people with benefits.

If another company was considering rolling out a similar policy, what might they not expect? Keep reading here.

What do Peloton, Lowe’s, and State Farm have in common? Their CMOs have all headed for the exit in recent months. And they’re not alone: The average marketing chief tenure in 2020 and 2021 reached a low of 40 months, according to executive-search firm Spencer Stuart. But for executive recruiters looking to hire marketers, all hope is not lost. As Marketing Brew’s Katie Hicks reported, some skills may signal staying power.

[Maryanne Martire, partner at executive recruiting firm Daversa Partners] said she looks for four main things when hiring a marketing executive: past positive marketing outcomes; signs of being willing to take risks; a quantitative understanding of why certain marketing tactics work; and strong leadership skills.

Stacy Kemp, executive lead of Deloitte’s CMO Program, said some of the most common terms found in job descriptions for CMOs today are “data and analytics” and “customer insights.”

Another skill that she said is important for CMOs? Understanding the economics of the business. Kemp said the ability to be “financially conversant,” connecting marketing performance to the broader business, can separate “truly high-performing CMOs from everyone else.”

Stefanie Grossman, CMO of Prezi, echoed this sentiment, saying that CMOs “need to understand the unit economics of your business” and be able to discuss things like returns and costs with the finance team.

Keep reading here.—KH

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 20% of US workers report experiencing poor treatment at work because of their political views. (SHRM)

Quote: “It isn’t a loss; it’s an ongoing battle.”—Chris Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, after workers at an Amazon facility near Albany voted against unionizing (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that skipping the daily commute has returned 60 million hours to employees who work remotely. And that’s arguably better for worker productivity. (Fortune)

Learn: You don’t need a crystal ball to accurately predict your 2023 budget. Join the Brew’s Financial Forecast sprint starting November 13 and learn everything you need to know about building a completed business budget.

Family-friendly benefits: Are you meeting the needs of working parents? If you don’t offer childcare benefits, 83% of parents say they’ll find a workplace that does. Vivvi’s flexible model supports infancy through elder care. Start here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}