Kristo Käärmann last month left his desk for a three-month break from the CEO role at cross-border payments firm Wise to spend time with his newborn child. He was acting on one of the company's core tenets: If you work hard, you deserve a break.
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In return, London-based Wise expects its 5,000 employees in 17 offices worldwide to spend most workdays in the office in hands-on collaboration mode, at a time when many other payments technology firms are working fully remotely or taking a hybrid approach by mixing in-office with remote work.
"Our guideline is to have employees primarily work in the office, with a healthy amount of flexibility built in so people can get all the things done in their lives, too," said Harsh Sinha, Wise's Austin, Texas-based chief technology officer, who is acting as interim CEO during Käärmann's time out.
Wise's emphasis on in-person collaboration is partly dictated by the competitive pace of the digital cross-border payments arena, which requires constant product development to keep up with new technology, Sinha said. But it also reflects a deliberate approach to maximizing efficiency by organizing employees into small, cross-functional groups.
"Groups of eight to 10 people work very well for developing products because they can work fairly independently to innovate, test and fix problems in the same place at the same time, without having to make tons of calls and document the activity for people who aren't there," Sinha said.
Teams at Wise frequently use Zoom and messaging apps to collaborate with colleagues in other locations as needed, according to Sinha. Each team may decide whether to make Friday a flex day, or knock off early, but the overall focus is on working together in the office.
Operating this way over the last few years, Wise has doubled its output so that it releases new code for products at an average rate of 5,000 times per a month, according to Sinha. During the fiscal half-year ended Sept. 30, 2023, Wise's income rose 58% over the same period a year earlier, to $820 million. Its active customer base grew 30% year-over-year during the same period, while the firm moved $71.7 billion, up 12%.
In its Austin office, Wise hosts about 180 employees, with plans to increase headcount by 50% over the next year, Sinha said. Growth necessitated the firm's recent expansion to occupy all 28,000 square feet floor of one floor of an Austin office tower with a gym, and that's located near restaurants and entertainment.
Wise has similar facilities in its two other U.S. offices in New York City and Tampa, Florida, where it hosts another 500 employees; the other staffers are in Europe.
Sinha doesn't fear that Wise's insistence on in-office work will deprive the company of finding talented workers who insist on remote work.
"Our offices are in places with a good quality of life, and we make sure people are having fun while they work," said Sinha, who has two children with his wife, another technology executive.
Other payments technology firms are taking their own unique approaches to managing remote and in-office work.
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"We know time together is vital for collaboration and innovation, as well as helping us all feel part of a community, but we also recognize that our people want and need flexibility about what work gets done where — it's about the most appropriate environment for the task," Mantell said.
In a recent survey Los Angeles-based Korn Ferry conducted, most professionals said they prefer the option to work remotely. About 75% of respondents said companies with a hybrid work environment are the most productive and 88% said the hybrid approach is here to stay.
Almost half of respondents, or 46%, said mandates to return full-time to the office hurt employers' ability to retain talent to some extent. Korn Ferry conducted its survey among 1,017 professionals last month.
"Companies that succeed in bringing people back to the office are doing so by making the office experience worthwhile," said Dan Kaplan, senior client partner in Korn Ferry's Miami office. That includes supporting employees' needs with technology, leadership and mentorship opportunities instead of just offering "free pizza."
Financial services firms may have a tougher challenge in managing back-to-work policies than other types of corporations, said Phil Kirschner, a senior expert and associate partner with McKinsey & Co.
One reason is that traditional banks and asset management firms are more likely to require people to be in the office full-time or most of the time, but pure-play fintech firms tend to encourage remote work or highly flexible arrangements, he said.
"We see some people at large financial firms who are stuck between a rock and a hard place, because they work at a bank where everyone is expected to come into the office every day, but they self-identify as technologists and they expect to have the flexibility of a fully remote workplace," Kirschner said.
It's important that managers clear obstacles away for employees and think about the output and quality of work, instead of employees' physical presence, he said.
"Sometimes it requires totally rewiring an organization's operating model so everyone can access real-time information. For example, I shouldn't have to schedule a meeting to find out how a project is going; that information should be immediately available to anyone," he said.
While rapidly evolving AI models may accelerate the use of more collaborative tools, in the near future most employers will need to make the workplace worth commuting to, according to Kirschner.
"Part of employees' resistance to going back into the office is their belief that the office doesn't meet their needs, and employers are going to have to fix that by making workplaces more experiential, digital, networked and flexible," he said.
