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Return-to-office mandates continue to infuriate workers around the country, and implementing them remains a major concern for HR departments. But real estate marketplace Zillow is trying a different approach: letting employees work from wherever they want.
“We like to think we hire adults. We like to treat people like adults,” Dan Spaulding, chief people officer at Zillow, tells Fortune.
The company began implementing their remote-forward strategy in autumn of 2020, when they first told employees that they would not be asked to return to the office full-time. Hundreds of workers then began to relocate to different parts of the country, leading Zillow to establish their official “CloudHQ” model: The company considers its headquarters to be online, not in one physical location.
“We want employees to have the ability to choose where they live and work [based on] what is most effective for them on a daily basis,” Spaulding says. “And then we want to be hyper-intentional about when we are together in person.”
Prior to 2020, Zillow had 11 offices across the country, with 95% of their employees living within commuting distance to one of the offices. Today, they have six offices in major U.S. hubs, including San Francisco, New York, and Seattle. Spaulding says he goes into the office about four or five days a month, though never consecutively.
Taking a risk on remote work has paid off, he says. The company has seen a four fold increase in the number of applications for open roles since they began rolling out the CloudHQ model. The number of women employees has also increased by 5% as the company has expanded—perhaps unsurprising considering how much that cohort values flexible schedules.
“I’ve worked in HR for 25 years, I’ve never seen the demographic shift that I’ve seen since moving to Cloud HQ,” says Spaulding. “We believe that’s a differentiator for us in terms of not just attracting those employees to Zillow, but retaining them for a longer period of time.”
You can read more about Zillow’s approach to work here.
Sara Braun
Sara.Braun@fortune.com
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