Many bosses across Wall Street and beyond have been doubling down on their return-to-office mandates for employees — but not all CFOs, or even CEOs, are drinking the RTO Kool-Aid.
E-commerce giant Amazon CEO Andy Jassy threw down the RTO gauntlet in September, asserting “people will be in the office outside of extenuating circumstances.” Then too, JPMorgan Chase in January told employees they’d need to return to office five days a week, with CEO Jamie Dimon candidly detailing his views on remote work’s shortcomings in an internal town hall meeting, according to a Barron’s report. And back in January, one of President Donald Trump’s first-day actions included ordering federal agency heads to “as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements.”
But now — some five years after the COVID-19 pandemic first amplified remote work’s possibilities — there is growing evidence that it’s not just worker bees resisting the RTO call. Top executives are also taking advantage of the new technologies that have enabled the re-imagining of how certain jobs can be done from nearly anywhere with Wi-Fi. Josh Crist, a co-managing partner of the executive search firm Crist Kolder Associates, said he has seen a wide range of work arrangement setups for CFOs and other professionals.
“We are drawing up all kinds of different contracts — it’s such a wild kind of universe in terms of CFOs,” Crist said in an interview, noting that trends regarding work setup choices tend to vary by industry and region. West Coast and tech companies are typically more open to remote or hybrid setups, while the manufacturing sector tends to be more “old school,” he said.
A “small remote office”
To be sure, there is mounting momentum behind the RTO push, with headlines trumpeting bosses being “back” and some CEOs predicting that the “full” return to in-office work will be the norm in the coming years.
“I would say that five years ago everybody was strictly saying remote is fine and now as many clients as we engage on the remote side, it’s double that on the come-to-work side,” Crist said.
At the same time, a trickle of public filings and other evidence is emerging that shows some C-suite executives at all manner of companies are carving out work arrangements that are a far cry from the five-days-a-week-in-the-headquarters kind of grind.
For example, before Starbucks announced in August that Brian Niccol would be stepping down from his role as CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill to become CEO of the coffee retailer, he inked a deal that didn’t require him to relocate to the company’s Seattle, Washington, headquarters, according to a securities filing. In addition, the company agreed to set up “a small remote office” in Newport Beach, California, with the office to be “maintained at the expense of the company.”
More recently the San Diego, California-based Petco Health and Wellness Company appointed Sabrina Simmons to succeed Brian LaRose as the company’s CFO, with the position established as remote. The Feb. 17 offer letter stated: “Your primary work location will be remote; however, it is expected that you will spend at least one week per month in San Diego in addition to Board weeks and Finance team development. Travel expenses will be covered by the company,” the filing states.
The “structured hybrid” approach
Separately last fall, the video-conferencing software company Zoom Video Communications appointed Microsoft veteran Michelle Chang to take its CFO seat, CFO Dive previously reported. According to the terms of her offer letter, Chang is allowed to work remotely from her “personal residence” in the state of Washington and the Zoom offices in Seattle, Washington or the surrounding area. But Zoom may at times also “reasonably require you to perform your duties at Zoom’s offices and other locations other than your personal residence or the Seattle Office,” the filing states.
That arrangement came roughly a year after the company joined in the growing push back in 2023 for in-person work, asking employees within 50 miles of an office to work in person part-time, according to an Aug. 7, 2023 report in The New York Times.
Asked whether the company’s hybrid approach to work applies to all employees including executives, a company spokesperson in October confirmed that it does, but did not respond to questions about the arrangement it struck with Chang.
“We believe that a structured hybrid approach — meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams — is most effective for Zoom. As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers,” the spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement sent to CFO Dive in October. Zoom would continue to “hire the best talent, regardless of location” and to leverage its platform to keep “dispersed teams” working efficiently, the spokesperson added. The company declined to comment further on the matter, the spokesperson said Friday.
Asking for remote terms into your contract? Think again.
It’s not just large public companies that are offering the hybrid and remote work sweeteners to bring new talent aboard. Last month the Des Moines, Iowa-based payments company Dwolla appointed a former Walmart executive, Daniel Quezada, to become its CFO. Quezada, who lives in Arkansas, characterized his work arrangement as hybrid.
“My work arrangement is indeed hybrid. This means I’ll be spending time both at Dwolla’s headquarters in Iowa and working remotely from my home. This flexible approach allows me to balance my responsibilities while maintaining a strong connection with the team and operations,” Quezada said in an email.
Still, while some employment contracts are detailing the remote or hybrid terms, insisting on such clauses may not be advisable as it still could carry something of a stigma, especially for the CFO-level seat for which being in the office from a technical oversight standpoint can be part of the job, according to Crist.
“It’s pretty darn rare to put it into the contract,” said Crist, who represents companies hiring C-suite executives. “I wouldn’t ask for it because that would say to me, as a hiring manager, that this person doesn’t really want to work for us.” Yet, if executives do go silent in contracts on their work terms, it’s possible the public may never know just how many CFOs and CEOs are, well, actually back.