The days of fully remote set-ups are past their peak for most employees. According to July 2023 LinkedIn data, seen by BBC Worklife, there has been a 50% year-over-year decrease in remote roles advertised on the platform in the US, and a 21.5% drop in the UK.
Yet even as more firms issue hard-line return-to-office mandates and clamp down on employees working from home, there are some companies still steadfastly remaining – or even switching to – remote set-ups.
The trend skews towards technology firms, particularly startups, who are inherently tech-enabled, and have invested in their remote workforces. During the pandemic, for instance, Airbnb pivoted to a “Live and Work Anywhere” programme, which it’s retained to date. Online real estate marketplace Zillow switched to a permanent work-from-anywhere policy in 2020, subsequently announcing that it would pay the same wage to employees who moved away from its Seattle headquarters.
Yet there are also some companies – both multinational corporations and startups – still embracing remote employment. These arrangements could be the last of a dying breed. Yet companies’ refusals to give in to the return-to-office trend may also serve as proof of concept that tethering workers to desks like they were before the pandemic isn’t the only way – or even the best way – to work.
‘An opportunity to embrace a better way of working’
During pandemic lockdowns, some companies found the switch to remote working relatively seamless.
Founded in 1995, Vista produces physical and digital marketing items for small businesses. Its 6,700-strong workforce includes in-person employees at printing plants in North America and Europe as well as distributed teams scattered across various finance, HR and product design departments in 15 countries.
Vista switched its set-up to be remote-first in August 2020 as a long-term strategic decision (Credit: Courtesy of Vista)
Headquartered in Venlo, Netherlands, Vista switched to a remote-first model for its office workers in August 2020. “Working from home was initially a necessity, but we didn’t look at it as a stop-gap,” says Massachusetts-based Dawn Flannigan, vice president of human resources for Vista’s parent company Cimpress. “Instead, our thinking was that we were presented with an opportunity to embrace a better way of working and rethink our talent strategy.”
Pivoting to virtual work meant overhauling decades’ worth of in-person practices, says Flannigan. “We wanted to move down the asynchronous path of non-linear workdays, so teams could work more flexibly. That meant relying more on documentation, training employees on collaborative tools and setting better agendas so there were fewer meetings, and building new teams responsible for making people effective at remote-first working.”
In doing so, Vista has been able to access deeper talent pools, improve results and boost employee engagement, says Flannigan. She cites a June 2023 internal survey of its workforce, in which 87% of staff said the company’s remote-first policy improved their ‘work-life harmony’ (“calling it ‘work-life balance’ implies the scale has to tip one way or another,” she adds).
Without fixed in-person office days, Vista has also reconfigured its onboarding. Its former offices around the world have been turned into collaboration centres with hot desks, enabling teams to choose to occasionally work in person and brainstorm. “We’ve designed a 100-day programme specifically to train new starters in adapting to remote-first working,” says Flannigan. “It includes networking opportunities, where we encourage team members to meet in a collaborative space, introduce themselves and build their working relationships.”
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London, says large organisations that traditionally depend on in-person working are likely just as capable as Vista at creating a remote-first workplace. Yet they still often prefer in-office patterns, he adds, not because they’re necessarily limited by virtual working, but because they’re actually constrained by a predisposition towards physical workspaces.
“The tools, advantages and motives for a company to be fully remote are the same for a large conglomerate as they are for a small tech startup,” says Chamorro-Premuzic. “But the main difference is that older businesses [stick] to their own traditions and habits.”
In short, companies taking Vista’s path are rare – but it’s still possible to go remote. It may just mean re-evaluating the entrenched office norm.
Starting out remote
Although new companies may set up in-office mandates from the start, many are launching businesses as fully remote outright. For example, skills-based recruitment startup TestGorilla was founded in 2019 in Amsterdam with a workforce that gets their jobs done anywhere – and as remote hiring boomed through the pandemic, so did its growth.
Others started with in-office setups but switched to remote early on in their growth. Riannon Palmer (pictured below) is the founder of PR agency Lem-uhn. Launched in 2021, it initially had a London workspace under an informal flexible-hybrid policy, in which staff chose their in-office workdays. But in May 2023, as the company grew, Palmer decided to set a fully remote model, subsequently launching a work-from-anywhere policy.
The choice to be office-free is philosophical, rather than financial, says Palmer. “It’s about making people happier and more engaged in their work, and reducing presenteeism. Being a remote company means trusting employees to know where they work best and enabling them to be productive – whatever that looks like to them.”
Riannon Palmer of PR firm Lem-uhn says she’s at a hiring advantage allowing staffers to work remotely (Image: Courtesy of Riannon Palmer)
By having a flexible-working model, Palmer says Lem-uhn is at a hiring advantage, given most PR firms have issued return-to-office mandates. “It means you can attract top, diverse talent even when you’re just starting out. We’ve had one employee join who is still able to dog-sit around the UK, a working mother that can pick their child up during the school run and recent job candidates that are more introverted. Being remote means having more inclusivity and variety in teams.”
As firms U-turn on remote working or stiffen their return-to-office mandates, leaders’ justification often focuses on how in-person collaboration is integral to learning and development, long-term planning and workplace culture. But Flannigan says all three features can be fostered among distributed teams. “Culture isn’t defined by walls. It’s based on values – the way you work.”
‘Being remote is an operating model’
More than three years since most of the workforce worked from home out of necessity, employers such as Vista and Lem-uhn are choosing virtual-working as their ideology. Consequently, they’ve made distinct, existential decisions in how they operate as businesses, explains Chamorro-Premuzic.
This means that remote-first organisations often share similar qualities. “Fully remote firms tend to be more employee-centric, in that an all-virtual model is more likely to please workers, who prefer autonomy,” says Chamorro-Premuzic. “And they’ll likely be more trusting: they don’t need to see where and how people work. So, they’ll likely treat employees as adults and give them freedom and flexibility, which generally boosts performance.”
As the number of work-from-home roles dwindles, demand is vastly outstripping supply: LinkedIn US data shows that 44% of all job applications on the platform in July were for remote roles. Chamorro-Premuzic says this relative scarcity means these employers will be increasingly coveted in the labour market.
In many cases, these organisations appeal to employees who not only want to work flexibly, but also want to do so for forward-thinking companies. “It goes further than just saying ‘work from home and be behind a monitor’,” says Flannigan. “Being remote is an operating model, not a perk. It’s inspiring and empowering people to work wherever is most productive for them, and measuring them by results rather than an office parking lot.”