Companies Embracing Remote Work Amid Return-to-Office Push

The software maker Atlassian has 13,000 employees in more than a dozen countries. Nine in 10 of its workers report that flexibility is both an important reason they stay and that it allows them to do their best work, Avani Prabhakar, the company’s chief people officer, previously told Business Insider.

Since the company introduced its work-from-anywhere policy in 2020, it has seen the number of applicants per job opening double, Prabhakar said.

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike has a remote-first work culture. From its inception over a decade ago, the company has placed an emphasis on hiring talent from a diverse pool.

“Being a remote-first company ensures CrowdStrike can hire the best people — regardless of their geographic location,” the company wrote in 2022.

The company added that its remote structure enables employees with family or caregiving obligations to contribute to its mission.

Deel’s Bouaziz said the most in-demand workers are often most willing to push back — or leave — when employers introduce rigid RTO policies. He said that the strict approach by some companies has benefited Deel.

Deel has a global workforce and hired more than 2,000 employees in 2024 — out of a pool of 1.5 million applicants, the company said.

Dropbox implemented a “virtual-first” policy in 2021. The cloud storage company has redesigned its workforce to focus on flexibility, and this approach has paid off in both hiring and retention, Melanie Rosenwasser, the company’s chief people officer, previously told Business Insider in an email.

The average number of applicants per job is nearly sevenfold higher than it was prior to the company adopting its virtual-first model, Rosenwasser said. She added that more than eight in 10 applicants accepted Dropbox’s employment offers, and attrition is the lowest in the company’s history.

The software company says more than 70% of its employees work remotely. HubSpot requires its employees to work from the location where they were hired, but allows them to log on from elsewhere for up to 90 days.

Remote workers can visit an office twice a quarter. The company also offers a stipend each month to go toward expenses related to working remotely.

HubSpot also provides funds so that workers in a geographic area can meet up with their colleagues. There are also monthly virtual chats, where the company pairs someone with another employee elsewhere in the company to facilitate a sense of belonging.

Mozilla embraces a remote-first approach while offering in-person options.

“Employees have the flexibility to choose the type of workspace that best supports their productivity and wellbeing — whether that’s a home office, a Mozilla office, or a co-working space,” a spokesperson told Business Insider in an email.

The open-source software company has offices or coworking spaces in several locations, including San Francisco, New York, Berlin, Toronto, Paris, and London. For those who prefer an office setting but are based elsewhere, the company may cover the cost of a coworking space, Mozilla said.

“By accepting the imperfect reality of a hybrid environment, we enable ourselves to take full advantage of the opportunity of this moment,” the company wrote in a 2022 blog post.

Olipop has been remote since its founding, but the prebiotic soda brand, which has roughly 220 staff members, hosts cohorts of new hires for off-sites throughout the year and also holds regular leadership and individual team off-sites.

In a previous interview with Business Insider, CEO Ben Goodwin said that instead of investing in office facilities, Olipop pays significant costs in employee benefits and perks. The company pays for employees to have a gold PPO plan and covers 95% of insurance costs, Goodwin said.

Olipop also offers department off-sites, a party at the end of the year with a DJ and a hotel stay, new hire orientations, and a program for leadership called Olipop Leadership University.

Since early 2021, when the music streaming service introduced a policy allowing employees to work from anywhere, Spotify has seen about half of its employees working remotely — from home or elsewhere — and the remainder going into an office.

Spotify states that roles are often associated with specific regions or time zones; most employees have the option to work from a country where the company has an established entity.

The annual attrition rate at Spotify has fallen to 3%, about half of what it was before it began the policy, according to the company. At the same time, the average time to hire workers has dropped to 37 days from 48, Spotify said.

Toptal, a company with about 700 employees, has operated remotely since its inception. Taso Du Val, CEO of the talent sourcing company, previously told Business Insider that he thinks of the structure as hybrid, because teams meet typically for three-day off-sites once a quarter.

He said the ideal work structure is an “80/20 mix,” which he describes as working remotely 80% of the time and meeting in person the other 20%.

For a week each year, the software company Zapier brings together its workers and customers to focus on various projects, Brandon Sammut, the company’s chief people officer, previously told Business Insider.

By working with customers and problem-solving with teammates, he said, “you naturally build connection and belonging.”

Some of Zapier’s 800 workers, who are spread across 42 countries, also gather periodically to focus on a particular topic or challenge.

An earlier version of this story appeared on November 14, 2025.

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