These Companies Innovate and Collaborate Without Office Mandates

Rising social media start-up Bluesky reached more than 25 million users in recent months, at one point adding a million users a day. Behind the scenes is a small team of 20 people — who all work remotely.

Bluesky, which evolved from a Twitter research project to an independent entity in 2022, chose remote work because it needed specialized engineers from North America and abroad, its executives say. Employees write proposals that the team debates, looking for holes in ideas. They gather in person one week a quarter and in smaller groups throughout the year to foster collaboration.

"When somebody tosses out an idea, I say, 'Write a proposal!'" said Paul Frazee, Bluesky's chief technology officer, who said the company's way of working makes him confident in remote work indefinitely. "In some ways, this was the only way we could do this," added Rose Wang, Bluesky's chief operations officer.

Almost five years after the pandemic forced many to work remotely or hybrid, companies across the country are wrestling with what works for their cultures, workforces and future. Some are enforcing five-day office mandates, arguing that innovation, collaboration and productivity are best accomplished in person. But others are reinventing how work gets done after doubling down on remote and hybrid models.

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In November, the share of people working fully on-site had decreased 2.8 percentage points from 79.5 percent during the same time last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those who worked remotely, at least part time, also jumped 2.8 percentage points from 20.5 percent.

The debate over work flexibility continues to ignite controversy, spurring employee protests, legal filings and even resignations. While companies implementing office mandates say they improve performance, a recent Gallup poll found that a majority of workers prefer hybrid work, saying it reduces burnout, improves productivity and encourages work-life balance.

Companies that recently required workers to return to the office five days a week have garnered attention, including Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. The Post is also asking workers to return to the office five days a week. Goldman Sachs' CEO David Solomon, one of the first to call workers back full time in 2021, also cited innovation and collaboration as reasons for the mandate. President-elect Donald Trump has also said he'll call federal workers back to the office five days a week.

"We've observed that it's easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said when announcing the policy in September.

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Asked to provide a comment for this story, Amazon pointed to Jassy's announcement. Goldman Sachs reiterated its previous statement saying showing up and being present with employees and clients has "bigger impact."

Companies that embrace hybrid and remote work options tend to be highly online and have workers whose jobs don't necessarily depend on location like those in blue-collar and health-care positions do. They acknowledge that it takes effort to rethink structure, communication, physical space and access to documents and colleagues. Some downsized their office footprint and invested the savings in helping teams gather when it makes most sense. They also say it can be a challenge to maintain momentum, align goals, foster communication, promote mentoring and support people's sense of belonging.

For Pinterest, the focus on changing how managers supervise and support became critical, said Sara Phillips-Broadhurst, the company's senior director of people strategy and innovation. So offering managers new training has been key. Atlassian, a collaboration software company, determined it needed a way for everyone to better align on goals. So every Friday, teams create a tweet-length update on every goal and project for leaders and other teams to review the following Monday.

"It gives the whole company the chance to understand what's happening at any given time," said Annie Dean, vice president of Atlassian's Team Anywhere, the organization charged with overseeing distributed work. "So many problems companies have are because of silos."

Despite initial challenges, Kai Swavely, senior director of people technology at Pinterest, said the company's policy called PinFlex, which allows workers to choose where they work if their jobs can be done anywhere, has helped expand its ability to innovate. After making its annual hackathon virtual in 2023, that year's winning idea came from a Pinterest employee outside the United States and brought together departments to develop an internally "beloved" tool that helps workers find information.

"Before the pandemic, you had to be in San Francisco to participate," she said. "There was an unrealized limitation of time zone, country and teams you had never been exposed to."

The key to doing the best work in distributed environments is guidance and experimentation, Phillips-Broadhurst said. That includes tasking leaders with being intentional about asking employees to meet in person. It also means using a mix of traditional internal information hubs, messaging apps and emerging tech such as artificial intelligence for support.

Atlassian reduced its office footprint and reinvested the savings in bringing employees together. It has a culture of documentation, using shared documents, messaging systems and video to help employees capture meetings and comments and collaborate even though they may work at different times.

"It doesn't make sense to me, in the age of AI, our focus is being spent on where people sit," Dean said. "We have to intentionally design the new way forward."

Earlier this year, Atlassian released Rovo, its first AI product built and shipped within six months, marking the fastest product development at the company to date. Atlassian was able to move about 200 employees to the project and hire 200 more within that time frame. Most meetings were recorded and documented, and the shared goals and progress tracking made it possible to move faster, said Jamil Valliani, Atlassian vice president and head of AI products.

"At first, it was like, 'I have to write more?'" he said. "If you approach it that way, then of course you're going to see nothing but problems. You're not going to see that you increase your reach."

Allowing employees to work remotely also has helped Yelp become more efficient, said Craig Saldanha, chief product officer. About 87 percent of workers said they were more productive, he said. With the new model, Yelp brings new features to market 60 percent faster, Saldanha said. A lot of the efficiency, he said, came from formalizing processes already happening on an ad hoc basis. In distributed environments, being clear about goals and expectations impacts the efficiency of the team.

"What came during the pandemic was this realization that innovation comes from clarity rather than proximity," he said.

The ability for people to collaborate across teams and geographies has allowed people to innovate in ways that didn't happen before, Saldanha said. For example, Yelp's new AI assistant came from a group of distributed engineers who developed the idea during an online hackathon.

Airbnb is also experiencing a jump in productivity, which Iain Roberts, head of people and culture, credits in part to the company's flexible work policy. Airbnb has released 535 updates in the past three years, and the scale of each launch has increased every year, he said. Strategic gatherings, guidelines and specially designed spaces have helped the company navigate the new environment.

"Our employees feel that the model works for them, and we're able to achieve more," he said. Those are the "leading indicators that this is working."

For H&R Block, which changed its initial office plan to allow people to work remotely part time, company data showed collaboration, employee engagement and productivity had not declined in remote work, said Tiffany Monroe, H&R Block's chief people and culture officer. So H&R Block created a playbook that offered tips for managing distributed work, including when to host meetings or check in with direct reports, where documents are stored, and what tools to use for collaboration and communication. It also hosted trainings and question-and-answer sessions.

"When we see things that may be shifting, as leaders, we shift," Monroe said, adding that innovation won't suffer if companies try "to be more thoughtful."

Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economics professor who studies remote work, said flexible work can allow companies to get better talent by investing in people rather than spaces. It also gives workers more time for deep thinking that can lead to better results, though he suggests companies should also ensure workers spend some time together in person.

Deborah Lovich, future of work fellow at Boston Consulting Group's Henderson Institute think tank, said many companies prefer the office-based model of working because it's familiar, even though the pandemic showed that remote or hybrid models can be successful. In her view, those companies are becoming less employee-centric, to their detriment.

"It completely demoralizes your talent," she said. "There's nothing that says 'I don't trust you' like an RTO mandate — other than an RTO mandate tracking badge swipes."

— Danielle Abril, The Washington Post