Upwork : 2020 Annual Impact Report

2020 Annual Impact Report

Building Back Better

2020 ANNUAL IMPACT REPORT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2

03 Introduction

10 Unlocking Opportunity

20 Our Team

1. Business Ethics & Governance

1. Environment

1. Appendix

2020 ANNUAL IMPACT REPORT

INTRODUCTION

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Introduction

2020 ANNUAL IMPACT REPORT

INTRODUCTION

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Message from Hayden Brown, President & CEO

President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director at Upwork Inc.

COVID-19 has disrupted lives and caused suffering for millions around the world - blurring the lines between our personal lives and work, and forcing us to navigate and adapt

to new complexities of daily life. For many, this disruption has been very apparent in the way we work. This rapid transition to remote work validates something we at Upwork have always known: traditional models of work are both in need of and capable of change.

Rather than focus solely on where work happens, we must also shift our mindsets around how it gets done and who we are tapping into for our critical work. Now with more than

50 percent of Gen Z college grads and 59 million Americans freelancing, businesses increasingly recognize the importance and value of partnering with remote freelancers to provide dynamic solutions to business-criticalefforts. At Upwork, we embraced this new reality well before COVID-19and worked to lay the foundation for long-termgrowth.

Upwork achieved many milestones in 2020. Our team took quick action to enable our clients and the remote freelancers on our work marketplace to adapt and work more effectively through the pandemic. We doubled down on our values and beliefs, putting our teams and communities first, while answering challenges and opportunities presented by COVID-19. I couldn't be prouder of the impact we made in 2020 and want to recognize several key achievements:

COVID-19 Resilience

Throughout the pandemic, we took action to identify, prioritize, and address the pressing needs of teams, clients, and remote freelancers.

To alleviate economic hardship, Upwork became a founding partner of the Freelancers Relief Fund, established by Freelancers Union to offer financial assistance of up to $1,000 per freelance household to cover lost income and essential expenses not covered by government relief programs. Through our Work Together Talent Grants programwe

offered $1 million in talent grants to 40 organizations working to mitigate COVID-19's devastating impact

on individuals, communities, and economies. Building on our 20 years of experience as a remote work company, we permanently embraced and transitioned to a remote-first model as a default for all teams and established a dedicated taskforce to ensure a smooth transition for our workforce.

Our People &

Community Action

We upheld our values as a people-first company by prioritizing the health and safety of our teams amid COVID-19, providing mental health resources, medical benefits, and an "Office in a Box" with a collection of workstation set up resources, including an Amazon Business account with pre-vetted equipment, ergonomic workspace solutions, and monthly and annual stipends. Accelerated by the horrific events surrounding George Floyd's murder, we furthered our commitment to racial equality, human rights,

and social justice - demonstrated through our public action plan against racism, cultural competence training addressing strategies for amplifying Black employee voices, and guidance on cultivating an antiracist company culture to help other companies elevate the voices of Black employees. This philosophy extends to our work marketplace where features like our Diversity-Certified Badges empower diverse independent talent and enable clients to increase diversity

in their supply chains. As a business, we became an early signatory of SurveyMonkey's supplier diversity initiative, pledging to track the diversity, equity, and inclusion of the vendors we work with.

(continued)

2020 ANNUAL IMPACT REPORT

INTRODUCTION

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Message from Hayden Brown, President & CEO (continued)

Product Innovation

As the events of 2020 threatened the financial security of many around the world, we continued to increase our speed of innovation in delivering the tools and technology at the core of our mission to create economic opportunity so people have better lives. Through enhancements to our product experience and offerings, such as the launch of our Direct Contractsoffering, which enables freelancers to take advantage of our escrow solution for all of their freelancing relationships, we helped remote freelancers attain even more control and safeguards over their freelance businesses. Another of our solutions, Project Catalog™, which launched in beta in 2020 and rolled out to all customers in February 2021, helps remote freelancers to build

a powerful new income stream in minutes. Clients can browse projects and purchase services instantly.

Environmental Leadership

We have proven that we can impact climate change by embracing a remote work model at our own company. In 2020, we published our Emissions Report, where we detailed our efforts to enable team members to avoid over one million commuting miles in 2019. As a result of tremendous team collaboration, we also announced that we achieved carbon neutrality for 2019 and will remain carbon neutral going forward. We hope our Emissions Report will serve as a model for other businesses to unlock their own potential by embracing remote work, including independent freelancers long-term, ultimately contributing to the fight against the global climate crisis.

These achievements, paired with our financial performance, demonstrate that we are uniquely positioned to capture the exciting opportunity ahead by serving our clients and remote freelancers with the world's largest, most dynamic, and most innovative work marketplace. We are excited to continue to distinguish the Upwork platform by enabling our

customers to build the long-term, trusted relationships that we are known for today and which are unique in the world of remote freelancers.

It is these enduring relationships between clients and talent that enable our customers to truly transform their business operations to take

full advantage of the powerful work marketplace model, breaking through barriers that may have held their businesses back previously.

I am humbled and honored to share this report on behalf of our teams in 800+ cities across the world who continue to innovate in the face of unprecedented circumstances, while continuing to live out our mission to create economic opportunities so that people live better lives.

Sincerely,

Hayden Brown

President and Chief Executive Officer