The beginning of 2023 brought the end of some remote-work policies as
Disney,
Starbucks, and
Activision Blizzard all said they would require employees to come into the office more frequently.
Employees complained, and there was some
anecdotal evidence that in-office mandates were costing those and other companies good workers, who voted with their feet and went elsewhere.
Now, the proof is getting stronger that a lack of flexibility can hurt in the long term. Companies with flexible work policies are growing more quickly than those that require people to be in the office full-time, according to
The Flex Index, released July 18, which collects office requirements on more than 4,500 companies with 30,000 locations and that employ more than 100 million people globally.
Specifically, in the last year,
companies—regardless of their size—that are fully flexible added jobs at more than twice the rate of companies that were full-time in office.
"It seems pretty clear that the companies that are full time in-office are having a harder time attracting talent than the companies that offer some level of flexibility," says Rob Sadow, CEO and co-founder of Scoop, the technology company that publishes the report.
Even companies that offer some level of flexibility, whether it be two or three days working from home, have grown more quickly than those that require full-time in-office. Among companies that have between 500 and 5,000 employees, for example,
structured hybrid companies (i.e., that require employees to come in on some specific days, but not on others) grew headcount 4.6% over the year, while fully flexible companies of that size grew 4.5%. Full-time in-office companies of that size grew only 2.1%, by comparison.
But there's a limit to what kind of hybrid arrangement employees seem willing to commit to.
Companies that require 1-3 days in the office grew much faster than those that required four or five, the report found.
"Once you start getting closer to full-time in office, requiring four or five days, I think there's a bright line starting to emerge for employees and for your ability to attract talent," Sadow says.
