Why Neiman Marcus Group is doubling down on remote work

As we approach the end of the year, it appears the only topic more divisive than real versus faux Christmas trees is whether remote or in-person work is better.

Amid the discourse, 90% of employers have said they will return to the office by the end of next year, a ResumeBuilder survey found. Companies including Amazon, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, and Disney have implemented strict in-office attendance policies in recent months, with some even warning workers not in compliance that they may be fired. Neiman Marcus Group, meanwhile, is embracing remote work for the majority of its roughly 2,000 corporate employees. The retailer believes this strategy will be key to its long-term equity, recruitment, and retention success.

Not going out of style. After an engagement survey revealed employees wanted more flexibility, Eric Severson, Neiman Marcus Group’s chief people and belonging officer, told HR Brew that the company decided to move to a remote model. It was 2019, before Covid-19 hit, and while Severson had only recently joined the company, he had experience implementing remote-work arrangements.

“One of the reasons we had confidence to do this at that time was that I had done something similar at Gap Incorporated back in 2009,” Severson said. “We had something we adopted there called the ‘results-only work environment,’ that had first been tested at Best Buy. We saw dramatic results within six months, [a] 50% reduction in attrition.”

Severson believes the argument adopted by some leaders that in-person work is better for productivity and collaboration is misguided. The benefits, he said, outweigh the potential risks.

“This is actually a key challenge that all businesses are going to have to face going forward,” he said. “Companies have to constantly weigh out the risk of not being able to acquire and keep the talent you need to grow the business…against the risk that if you have non-colocated talent that they’ll be less collaborative, less productive.”

Seeing results. Severson said the company’s work-from-anywhere strategy has had positive impacts on the company. Neiman Marcus Group has, for example, decreased its office footprint by nearly 80%, instead focusing on smaller, more intentional spaces for the times when employees do come together. Its offices are now made up of 70% collaborative spaces and 30% individual, and have a non-hierarchical structure—a key, Severson said, to the company’s approach to equity.

The move has also given the company a competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting, something that’s been essential, he said, in an industry fighting for top talent. With remote jobs harder to find now than they were a year ago, Neiman Marcus Group has been able to find employees faster, and keep and engage them longer.

“Since implementing it, we’ve seen a 34 percentage point increase in Employee Net Promoter Score,” Severson said, noting the company has also experienced a 31% improvement in its time to hire. “By changing our policy and our approach, that enabled us to broaden our talent pool from the immediate metro area around our headquarters, to everywhere we do business.”

With a workforce that’s 57% non-white and 68% women, Severson said that remote work is part of its ESG and belonging strategy. Reports indicate that women, particularly women of color, disabled, and LGBTQ+ workers have benefited from remote work, thanks in part to flexibility and less stress and discrimination.

“We made a very conscious decision over the last four years to differentiate not only on flexibility, but on culture, and the two very closely go together.”