Fully remote companies have an advantage in hiring workers, new data shows

Companies like Meta, Amazon, and Citigroup have doubled down on getting workers back into the office, trying out various sticks and carrots to enforce stricter policies on in-person work.

Firms embracing remote work point to productive, satisfied workers as a major advantage of maintaining flexible arrangements. Yelp’s chief people officer, Carmen Whitney Orr, recently told HR Brew her company’s remote-first policy has also helped boost recruitment: The applicant pool for general and administrative roles grew by 200% between 2019 and 2022.

New data from Scoop Technologies, an HR and IT firm that advises organizations on hybrid work, provides further insight into the advantages fully flexible companies hold over others in recruiting workers, and suggests remote work continues to be an attractive benefit to prospective job candidates.

Remote work spurs headcount. The share of new US job postings offering at least one work-from-home day each week declined to 11.49% in June, according to WFH Map, down from 13.05% in November 2022.

But even as remote and hybrid work options become rarer, they’re giving companies a leg up in their hiring, according to Scoop’s report, which analyzed office requirements from more than 3,600 companies, coupled with headcount growth from People Data Labs.

Between June 2022 and May 2023, companies requiring zero days in an office saw their headcount grow by 5.6%, the report found. By contrast, headcount increased by 3.8% for companies requiring employees to be in the office four days a week, and just 2.6% for those requiring workers to be on-site five days a week.

Fully flexible or structured hybrid companies added headcount at more than twice the rate of full-time in-office firms. Fully remote companies grew the fastest, at 6.9%, the report found, while those allowing employees to choose if they work from an office grew their headcount by 5%. Firms with a structured hybrid arrangement—including those requiring a minimum number of days a week in an office, and those requiring a minimum number of specific days per week—grew by 4.3% and 4%, respectively.

The report noted fully remote companies tend to be smaller, which may contribute to faster headcount growth. Rob Sadow, CEO and co-founder of Scoop Technologies, said a high degree of job seeker interest in flexible work, as well as geographic radius, also play a role. “Companies can reach talent that lives further away with fewer required days in office,” he told HR Brew via email, and in turn have a larger talent pool to choose from.

Recruiters, take note. The authors of the report pointed to the drop in headcount growth for companies requiring four or five days a week in the office, noting, “it appears that four days per week in office is crossing the line for many job seekers.”

As executives craft return-to-office policies, it’s worth considering how stricter policies could affect their talent and retention strategies in the future. This is particularly true for HR leaders at mid-size companies with 500 to 5,000 employees: Those with flexible office policies more than doubled the headcount growth of full-time in-office companies over the past year.