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A recent slew of RTO mandates from major companies including Amazon, Starbucks, and Goldman Sachs show that the battle over remote work isn’t over. But some businesses are standing firm behind their remote policies.
Pinterest first established its “PinFlex” flexible work model in 2022, allowing employees to choose whether to work in-person or remotely from anywhere in the country. Doniel Sutton, the CPO of Pinterest, tells Fortune that all 4,500 global workers can fully work from home—but they still have access to the 22 offices located across North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific.
Sutton says that when she saw the wave of CEOs mandating RTO measures a couple years back, it only made her double-down on the company’s flexible work policy. And this latest wave doesn’t faze her. “Amazon and the others are mandating that people return to the office throughout the week, but we have remained true to our flexible working model as being core to who we are,” says Sutton. “It's allowed us to open the aperture in terms of a talent perspective.”
Historically marginalized job-seekers have been eager to join the company because of its flexible work policy, according to Sutton. About 79% of all Black, Indigenous, Latino, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander employees (BILNP) who have joined Pinterest within the past year came from outside of the Bay Area, compared to 60% of non-BILNP workers. The perk has also been popular with women—the company’s U.S. women employee population has increased 6% since introducing PinFlex. Flexible work schedules are particularly important for certain groups, like new parents, says Sutton, as well as people tasked with caring for aging parents. That’s important considering around 80% of the company’s workforce are millennials, who are increasingly looking after both their children and their parents.
Since rolling out PinFlex, the company’s headcount has surged by 22%. And the week after Amazon brought down its RTO hammer in September, Pinterest says it experienced a 90% surge in job applications. But although PinFlex has attracted a larger and more diverse candidate pool, Sutton stipulates that a virtual workforce comes with its own obstacles.
“While the benefit is great, I do think it's created challenges from a management perspective,” she says. “Our people managers are player coaches, which means they really need to be effective in this virtual environment. We have a lot of new young managers that haven't necessarily developed the capability to manage virtually.” This problem isn’t limited to Pinterest—only 28% of managers have actually been trained in how to lead hybrid workers, according to a 2024 report from Gallup, a workplace consulting and research company.
To address the issue, Pinterest introduced a Manager Kickstart program in the first financial quarter of this year. Required for all new supervisors, it provides templates that walk through how to approach one-on-one conversations, team working agreement outlines, and career development guides. Manager Kickstart includes skillbuilding courses on things like hiring, onboarding, and developing feedback mechanisms. Pinterest also conducts internal manager effectiveness studies via a partnership with Worklytics, a workplace analytics software company. The company says the findings of those studies help supervisors adjust how they oversee their teams. Later next year, the business plans to roll out a multi-year leadership development strategy to train managers in guiding diverse and distributed employees.
Sutton says that the success of any flexible policy relies on a strong interconnected workforce. And that means ensuring that management is capable of leading their teams in virtual settings.
“The staff that you build, the teams that you build, they have to be very effective,” she says. “You have to spend time just understanding what good management looks like.”
Emma Burleigh
emma.burleigh@fortune.com
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