This post was originally written in October of 2020. Since then, we update it monthly as notable companies announce their new remote work policies.
As COVID-19 spread around the world in early 2020, offices were forced to close. Anyone who could work fro home started to right away. Companies were forced to quickly figure out how to communicate, collaborate, share documents, and manage teams virtually.
After just a few months, though, a number of business leaders started to figure out the whole work-from-home thing has benefits. That’s when the announcements started pouring in. CEOs declared that it working from home would permanently become part of their companies’ futures (while others hammered away at returning to the office).
Now, two massive shifts are taking place that will likely accelerate the remote trend. According to Global Workplace Analytics, just 3.6% of the US workforce worked from home in 2018. Now, “Our best estimate is that 25-30% of the workforce will be working-from-home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.” Here’s why:
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Here are all of the companies that have made announcements that they’ll work from home permanently.Next to each company, you’ll find a link where fully remote jobs at that company are posted. I’ll update the list every time a notable announcement comes out.
Company | Policy | Remote Jobs | Story |
Nationwide | Remote First | "Nationwideplans to shrink from 20 physical offices pre-crisis, to just four," Lee Clifford wrote in a Fortune interview with Nationwide CEO, Kirt Walker. Walker added, "We think the world is changing. We’ve got to take cost out of the system. We want to enable sustainable growth." | |
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Square | Optional | "Moving forward, Squares will be able to work from home permanently, even once offices begin to reopen. Over the past several weeks, we've learned a lot about what it takes for people to effectively perform roles outside of an office, and we will continue to learn as we go," the spokesperson toldThe Verge. | |
Coinbase | Remote First | "After the restrictions of quarantine are over, Coinbase will embrace being “remote-first,” meaning we will offer the option to work in an office or remotely for the vast majority of roles. Whether in an office or remote, being 'remote-first' means we will all need to shift how we work," said Brian Armstrong, CEO, in a blog post. | |
Facebook (Meta) | Partial | "When you limit hiring to people who live in a small number of big cities, or who are willing to move there, that cuts out a lot of people who live in different communities, have different backgrounds, have different perspectives," Zuckerberg said on a livestreamposted to his Facebook page. | |
Shopify | Remote First | "As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over." (Tobi Lutke, CEO, tweeted.) | |
Box | Remote First | "...it will inevitably mean more flexible work, and allow more Boxers to be able to work from anywhere. Before the pandemic hit, ~15% of Box's workforce already worked remotely, and this number will surely increase over time," Aaron Levie, CEO, wrote in a blog post. | |
Upwork | Remote First | "Upwork knows firsthand the incredible outcomes that distributed teams can deliver. Building on our 20 years of experience as a remote work company, we are now permanently embracing a 'remote-first' model. (Hayden Brown, CEO, tweeted.) | |
VMware | Remote First | “I expect, as we continue in this environment, we’re sort of going to end up in the 50% to 60% range over time, and I don’t think we’re atypical,” CEO Pat Gelsinger told CNBC. | |
Hitachi | Partial | "The tech conglomerate's eventual goal is to have 70% of its workforce -- about 23,000 people -- work remotely for two or three days a week," wroteCNN's Kaorji Enjoji. | |
Slack | Optional | "Slack is going to become a much more distributed company. That means most employees will have the option to work remotely on a permanent basis if they choose, and we will begin to increasingly hire employees who are permanently remote," said Robby Kwok, SVP of People, in a blog post. | |
Quora | Fully Remote | "We are going fully remote first at Quora. Most of our employees have opted not to return to the office post-covid, I will not work out of the office, our leadership teams will not be located in the office, and all policies will orient around remote work." (Adam D'Angelo, CEO, tweeted.) | |
Fujitsu | Remote First | In a statement sent to the BBC the company spokesperson said that under a new plan, employees will "begin to primarily work on a remote basis to achieve a working style that allows them to flexibly use their time according to the contents of their work, business roles, and lifestyle." The company also said the programme would allow staff to choose where they worked, whether that was from home, a major corporate hub or a satellite office. | |
Novartis | Optional | "We have introduced an updatedflexibility policy that applies to all office-based associates, effectiveJuly 15, 2020. The policy shifts responsibility from manager-approved to manager-informed, empowering associates to choose how, where and when they work within their country of employment" (Novartis company blog post.) | |
Siemens | Optional | “The aim is to enable employees worldwide to work on a mobile basis for an average of two or three days a week, whenever reasonable and feasible,” Siemens said in a statement. | |
Zillow | Optional | "Effective immediately, we will offer about 90% of our employees the flexibility to work from home as an ongoing option, at least part-time, allowing them the ability to work where they are most productive, whether that is in the office, their home, or a combination of both," saidDan Spaulding, Zillow's Chief People Officer in a blog post. | |
Basecamp | Fully Remote | "Lease is up. Cleaning out our office." (Jason Fried, Founder & CEO, tweeted.)
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Atlassian | Optional | “We will seek out amazing, diverse talent unbounded by the physical footprint of our offices. We will continue to compete for talent in the global hubs, and we will be able to create opportunities for those in places we would have previously not been able to reach,” the company wrote in a blog post. | |
REI | Partial | “I am confident that the sale of the Spring District campus would have a positive impact on REI’s future—and yours,” REI President and CEO Eric Artz told employees in a video call. “This year has shown us our home is not a building. Our home is wherever we find ourselves doing our best work, pursuing our outdoor passions, serving our communities. Serving each other. | |
Hubspot | Optional | "In 2021, HubSpot will drop the 'ish' in 'remote-ish.' We’re going to shift to a hybrid remote-office model where career growth is equitable for everyone, whether you do your best work in an office or in a home office. It’s the right thing to do for our employees and candidates, and for growing a company we’re proud of long-term," Katie Burke, Chief People Officer, wrote in a blog post. | |
Schroders | Partial | “Schroders embraced flexible working long before lockdown and the investments we have made in remote-working technology over the years meant our business has not missed a beat since March. But in the space of a few months, we have made 20 years’ progress in attitudes towards flexible working, and we are going to continue with this momentum,” said global head of human resources Emma Holden. | |
Gett | Optional | "Gett’s global workforce of almost 1,000 employees are now entitled to choose between working a four or five day week," Personnel Today covered in an article. "Gett has also offered staff the opportunity to work remotely indefinitely should they wish. Employees can choose their preferred remote location or to work in the office, or a combination of the two." | |
Linklaters | Partial | Andrea Arosio, a partner at Linklaters and member of its people committee, said, “Our recent experience has demonstrated that, whilst we are a people-focused business and collaboration is key, remote working has worked remarkably well and we can deliver high-quality work whilst working remotely.” | |
JPMorgan Chase | Partial | “We are going to start implementing the model that I believe will be more or less permanent, which is this rotational model. Depending on the type of business, you may be working one week a month from home, or two days a week from home, or two weeks a month,” Daniel Pinto, COO and co-president, told CNBC. | |
U.S. Xpress | Partial | "Prior to this pandemic, I had never been a big believer in working from home," saidCEO Eric Fuller. "What we found is that our production actually got better. We put together a very rigorous schedule with daily touch points with each one of our employees working at home and we planned regular department meetings over the internet at least once a week | |
Okta | Remote First | Brian Fung of CNN Business wrote, "Okta's internal surveys showed strong demand for more work-from-anywhere flexibility. Roughly eight in 10 employees said they would feel as or more productive working remotely than in the office, according to data the company collected in 2019. Just 17% said they would prefer to work five days a week inside an office." | |
| Remote First | From SFGATE's article, "Pinterest pays $89.5 million to terminate San Francisco office lease" "As we analyze how our workplace will change in a post-COVID world, we are specifically rethinking where future employees could be based," Pinterest CFO Todd Morgenfeld said in a statement Friday. "A more distributed workforce will give us the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds and experiences." | |
RPG Enterprises | Partial | "The $4 billion grouphas framed a new policy wherein all its sales people will peoplewill permanently work remotely, whileother employees wouldWFH 50% of the time. For office-based staff, this can extendto 75% in special cases," wroteNamrata Singh in a Times of India article. | |
Verizon | Partial | CBS17.com covered the story: "At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Verizon transitioned over 90% of its employees to work from home. Now, the wireless company is hiring 950 additional customer service employees who will work from home permanently." | |
Brex | Remote First | "Moving forward, Brex will be a remote-first company. People can work from anywhere, and all of our processes, communications, and culture will be designed remote-first, i.e. assuming every employee is remote. We’ll have office hubs in major cities where employees can work from if they want to, but the vast majority of our team won’t be expected to be in an office," PedroFranceschi, founder of Brex, wrote in a Medium post. | |
Deutsche Bank | Optional | The bank’s leadership is working on a new “hybrid model” for how staff can split work between the office and their homes, Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing said at a conference on Thursday. | |
Indeed | Partial/ Optional | "While remote work is not ideal for everyone, what we’ve learned is that our employees can be equally productive working at home, and that flexible work options give us a better quality of life,"Indeed’s statement said. | |
Coca Cola India | Partial | "Coca-Cola introduced on Wednesday, an option for its employees to work from home permanently even post-pandemic, if their physical presence is not required in the office, according to a new policy." | |
Microsoft | Optional | “The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged all of us to think, live, and work in new ways,” says Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief people officer, in a note to employees. “We will offer as much flexibility as possible to support individual workstyles, while balancing business needs, and ensuring we live our culture.” | |
Dropbox | Remote First | "Starting today, Dropbox is becoming a Virtual First company. Remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work," the Dropbox team shared in a blog post. | |
Deloitte | Partial | Stephen Griggs, Deloitte U.K.'s managing partner, told ABC News in a statement. "We are proposing our Gatwick, Liverpool, Nottingham and Southampton [UK] offices will permanently close and the firm is consulting with Deloitte people based out of these offices to move to a permanent homeworking contract." | |
| Partial/ | "Moving forward, teams and team members will have flexibility to explore where they work: in the office, remotely, or a combination of the two," the Reddit staff wrote in a blog post. | |
LogMeIn | Remote First | "Since our founding in 2003,we have built the tools and technology needed to empower a remote workforce. Now LogMeIn isin a positionto lead from the front, be an example and live our mission asthework from anywhere companyin front of our customers and [4,000] employees.It is because of this that we have made the decision totransitionour business to apermanentremote-centric company," President & CEO, William Wagner, wrote in a LinkedIn post. | |
Capital One | Partial | "Capital One Financial Corporation has made a permanent work from home announcement for most of its employees at its US call centers for credit card services, even post-pandemic,"Malvika Gurung wrote for Trak.in. | |
State Farm | Partial | "State Farm Insurance announced this week that its Lincoln office is one of a dozen around the country that will close permanently, although it will not necessarily mean any local jobs are being cut," wroteMatt Olberding in the Lincoln Journal Star. | |
Square Enix | Remote First | Carly Page, Forbes, wrote: 'Square Enix says it will designate each employee as either "home based" (working an average of at least three days per week from home) or "office based" (working an average of at least three days per week from the office). Square Enix says it expects around 80 percent of its employees to be designated as home-based from next month, with some employees likely to office-based due to the nature of their work.' | |
Drift | Remote First | "David Cancel, CEO and co-founder of Drift.com Inc., announced the move to his nearly 400 employees earlier this week. In an interview, he explained that he believes permanent remote work will be the only way the company operates moving forward, "Lucia Maffei wrote in a BOSTINNO article. "But Drift is planning to renew the leases on its U.S. offices...The goal, said Cancel, is to transform its offices into what he calls 'conversation spaces.'" | |
Lincoln Financial Group | Partial | "The Radnor-based life insurer and retirement company put up for sale 210,000 square feet of office space in Concord, NH. Lucy Gase, senior vice president of administrative services and strategic support services...said about 25% were [already] working remotely prior to the pandemic." | |
Cimpress | Remote First | "Remote working is a once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of the workplace, the largest since the industrial revolution, and we want to embrace it. That is why so many team members in Vistaprint and Cimpress central teams are moving to remote-first working. “Remote-first” means that, even after team members can safely return to working together in person following the pandemic, their primary place of work will be somewhere other than a traditional office." | |
Salesforce | Optional | "The cloud software company, which has over 9,000 San Francisco workers, said most staff will be in the office for one to three days per week. Workers who don’t need to be in an office can be fully remote, while a minority of workers will be at desks four or five days a week." | |
SoFi | Optional | CEO Anthony Noto said it a tweet, "Going forward, SoFi is proud to enable employees to work with their leaders/managers to determine the best place for each individual to work from." | |
Aquent | Remote First | "Boston-based Aquent will close down most of its offices, including one in Henrico’s West End. | |
Capita | Hybrid/ | "Its chief executive, Jon Lewis, said the company was moving towards a hybrid work model, with internal discussions with employees showing that 72 per cent of staff would prefer to work up to three days a week from home. | |
British Airways | Hybrid/ | "British Airways will let staff split their working lives between the head office and home in another example of big firms offering flexible employment. | |
HSBC | Partial | "HSBC is moving more than 1,200 staff in Britain to permanent working from home contracts, in one of the strongest indications yet of how banks are locking in changes to employees’ work patterns as a result of the pandemic to cut costs." | |
United States Air Force | Partial | "The U.S. Air Force is considering keeping in-person staffing at the Pentagon at just 50 percent even after the pandemic subsides, while the Navy issued policy Monday that keeps its occupancy at half for now, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed byDefense One." | |
United States Navy | Partial | "The U.S. Air Force is considering keeping in-person staffing at the Pentagon at just 50 percent even after the pandemic subsides, while the Navy issued policy Monday that keeps its occupancy at half for now, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed byDefense One." | |
Stellantis (Fiat Chrysler) | Hybrid/ Partial | "The automaker is launching a hybrid work initiative called the “New Era of Agility.” The goal is to have a majority of the company’s salaried employees work remotely most of the time. That includes 17,000 employees in North America..." | |
Amgen | Hybrid/ Optional | "Most of our employees who are currently working remotely will continue to do so for a majority of their time, even after the pandemic ends…Our intent is to create a more flexible environment that intentionally combines the benefits of remote and in-person working.” | |
Splunk | Hybrid/ Optional | "Splunk just announced that the tech company will allow most of its employees to work remotely permanently, as first reported by theSan Francisco Business Times. It has also listed almost 100,000 square feet of office space for sublease at its headquarters at 250 Brannan St. in SoMa." | |
Instacart | Remote First | "Instacart is becoming the latest Bay Area office to embrace remote work as a permanent fixture of the 'new normal' post-pandemic, announcing Thursday it will allow more than 70% of full-time employees to work from home on an ongoing basis." | |
Snowflake | Remote First | "Snowflake said in its earnings release on Wednesday that it no longer has a corporate headquarters, as its workforce is 'globally distributed.' The company designated Bozeman, Montana, as its principal executive office." | |
Apple | Hybrid/ | "Apple will have employees return to office buildings three days a week, with the option to work remotely twice a week, beginning in September,the Verge reports." | |
Synchrony Financial | Optional | According to Morning Brew, "Synchrony willofferthree different office options: permanently remote for those who love their noon showers, satellite locations for employees to reserve desks ad hoc, or hybrid schedules with an assigned desk." | |
Asda | Hybrid/ | "Asda will make “hybrid” working permanent for employees at its head offices once Covid rules are relaxed. The supermarket has announced that about 4,000 staff in total, at Asda House in Leeds and at George House in Leicester, can choose where they work best – whether at home, or at the office, shop or depot." | |
Nedbank | Hybrid/ Partial | "It’s quite brave to go for what they call now the ‘semi-flexible’ model where some staff will work from home and some staff will work from the office." | |
Pratt & Whitney | Partial/ | "In a major sign that the pandemic is dramatically reshaping the workplace, jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney plans to make working from home permanent for thousands of salaried workers at its East Hartford headquarters and downsize its office space on the campus by half." | |
| Remote First/ | "LinkedIn will allow employees to opt for full-time remote work or a hybrid option as offices gradually reopen, Chief People Officer Teuila Hanson told Reuters.
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Cisco | Remote First/ | "Cisco Systems said it would roll out a hybrid working plan that has no mandates for how often employees go into the office. The networking giant said its employee base was familiar with working hybrid and remote and expects that less than a quarter of its workforce will want to be in an office three or more days a week going forward." | |
Alphabet (Google) | Remote First/ Hybrid | "Alphabet Inc.’s Google approved 85% of employee requests to work remotely or relocate once its offices fully re-open, the company told staff Tuesday. Google is one the largest companies trying a hybrid approach to returning from the pandemic. It will ask most of its staff to go back to work in their previous offices, but let others do their jobs elsewhere. Over the past few months, some 10,000 employees applied to transfer to a new office or work from home." | |
PwC | Remote First | "In what may be a game-changing announcement in the accounting, tax, audit and consulting sector, PwC announced that around 40,000 professionals in the U.S. will work virtually outside of the office. The generally white-collar workers could live anywhere they’d like for the foreseeable future. " | |
Amazon | Optional/ | "Amazon is offering its office employeesmore flexibility when it comes to returning to their worksites, CEO Andy Jassy said Monday in a blog post. Instead of trying to implement a one-size-fits-all mandate, Jassy said in-office workdays will be determined by individual team directors. Amazon expects some teams will return to the office, some will continue remote work and some will strike a balance between remote work and coming into the office. Learn more about Amazon's work-life balance here. | |
Arena Pharmaceuticals | Remote First | "As a company our employees were more productive working from home than being in the office," said Mike Paolucci, Arena's Chief Human Resource Officer. "At the same time, employees were able to maintain a better work-life balance when working from home. And we also found that during the pandemic as a company Arena achieved and in many cases exceeded our company priorities and our goals." | |
Quinn Emanuel | Remote First | "Law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan on Monday said all of its U.S. lawyers, including first-year associates, can work from anywhere in the country indefinitely." | |
Muck Rack | Fully Remote | "In 2021, Muck Rack announced that the company would become fully distributed, doubling down on its commitment to remote work." | |
Robinhood | Remote First | "With our primarily remote approach, we provide employees with the flexibility they need to work where they are most comfortable and productive whenever we can. For a large segment of our employees, there will be no location or regular in-office requirement, and teams will come together in-person occasionally for key experiences and moments that drive connection and innovation." | |
Direct Line Group | Remote First | 2021 | |
Meesho | Remote First Optional | "Meesho, an e-commerce firm backed by SoftBank and Facebook, on Monday said it will permanently allow its employees to work from home, office, or any location of their choice." | |
State of Connecticut | Remote First | "As it tries to bounce back from the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Connecticut’s capital city of Hartford won’t be getting help from one of one of its biggest employers: the state government itself.The state owns 2.5 million square feet of office space in the city." | |
Pac-12 | Fully Remote | "The Pac-12 on Tuesday announced it’s leaving downtown San Francisco next year when its lease expires. Where’s the new headquarters? Nowhere. There will be no conference office in the traditional sense, only a facility for content production." | |
Crytek | Remote First | "After engaging with employees about how they wish to work going forward, Crytek is pleased to confirm that remote work will continue to be an option for current and future colleagues. Staff can also opt to work from Crytek's state-of-the-art offices on a full-time or part-time basis." | |
Airbnb | Remote First | "Today, we’re announcing that Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere..." CEOBrian Chesky said on Twitter. | |
City of Winnipeg | Remote First | The City of Winnipeg is beginning to roll out a flexible workplace program which would keep some city employees at home permanently, even once the pandemic is a thing of the past. Numbers from the survey show 95 per cent of employees who worked at home want to keep remote options going." | |
SAP | Remote First | "Today, SAP pledges to provide a setup that fits every role, style, and location with: - A 100% flexible and trust-based workplace as the norm, not the exception | |
Willful | Fully Remote | "The employer reopened its Toronto office earlier this year, inviting staff to go in on a voluntary basis. However, the space was under-utilized and wasn’t worth the cost of keeping it open, saysErin Bury, Willful’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “'When someone did go into the office, we joked that it was a $2,000 co-working day. We ended up subleasing the space ... in May [and] we’ve been fully remote since.'” | |
Molina Healthcare | Remote First | "Molina Healthcare said in a Dec. 28 SEC filing that it will record a $200 million impairment charge in the fourth quarter of 2022 attributable to leased space.
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Yelp | Remote First | "On July 1, we plan to close two additional offices — Phoenix, Arizona and Hamburg, Germany — due to low utilization. The two offices combined saw an average utilization of less than 6% over the last month. This reduction of our office space reinforces our commitment to operate as a remote company." | |
Philz Coffee | Remote First | "Philz Coffee has shuttered its massive campus inSan Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhoodand is moving its corporate headquarters to Oakland." |
In the table, you’ll see a few different classifications in the “policy” column. Some companies don’t have any offices at all. Others have offices but give their employees the option to work from home. There are differences in each policy.
Here’s how we define remote work policies.
These are the 10 most well-known companies that have gone all in on permanent work from home options for employees:
Every month, we update every Fortune 100 company’s return-to-office policy. You can download the Fortune 100 RTO spreadsheet below.
If you’re looking for some other helpful reading about working from home or building a remote company, take a look at these articles:
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