In September, Amazon announced that it was making a drastic change to its hybrid work policy, requiring almost all employees to return to the office five days a week as of next year. Months earlier, Dell told its employees that anyone who was fully remote would no longer be eligible for promotions, effectively forcing them to return to the office or forego career advancement.
In contrast to Amazon and Dell—and the many tech companies that have continued to embrace hybrid work—a select few, including Spotify, have chosen to remain fully remote.
In an interview with Raconteur this week, Spotify HR chief Katarina Berg explained the company’s stance, saying that the company had no plans to move away from its “work from anywhere” policy, which was formalized in 2021. “You can’t spend a lot of time hiring grown-ups and then treat them like children,” she said. Companies that were requiring employees to return to the office were simply “going back to what they know,” she added.
Remote retention rates
Berg conceded that remote work introduced challenges when it came to collaboration. “It is harder and we all struggle to collaborate in a virtual environment,” she told Raconteur. “But does that mean that we will start forcing people to come into the office as soon as there is a trend for it? No.”
In fact, Spotify has reportedly seen a noticeable impact on retention since embracing this policy, with attrition rates dropping by 15%. “We are a business that’s been digital from birth, so why shouldn’t we give our people flexibility and freedom?” Berg added. “Work is not a place you come to, it’s something you do.”
Other companies embracing flexible work
Spotify isn’t the only tech company that has continued to promote remote work, even amid pressure to return to the office. Airbnb has taken a similar approach with a “live and work anywhere” policy. “Our policy is, in some ways, harder,” Dave Stephenson, Airbnb’s CFO and head of employee experience, told Fast Company in 2023. “But I think if you are thoughtful about it, and take the time and energy to do it, it can work really well.”
Even in more traditional industries such as finance, some leaders are reevaluating whether five days in the office is really necessary. For the time being, at least, companies such as Amazon that are doubling down on full-time attendance in the office remain more of an outlier.
