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Hybrid policies work best when office attendance has a clear purpose, coworkers are present together, and employees retain meaningful flexibility. Two technology leaders described those principles in a 2024 discussion: Remitly expected employees to work in the office about half the time, while Morgan Stanley at Work Tech encouraged three days a week at its Calgary office. Their examples offer practical ideas—not proof that either schedule improves productivity or is right for every workplace.
Two policies, one emphasis on purposeful office time
At a panel held in Seattle on October 30, 2024, Remitly CEO and co-founder Matt Oppenheimer and Rasha El-Malki, then identified as chief of staff and COO for Morgan Stanley at Work Tech, described their organizations’ hybrid approaches. GeekWire’s November 1, 2024 report records their accounts. The figures below describe what the leaders said at that time; they should not be taken as confirmation of company policy in 2026.
| Example | Attendance expectation described in 2024 | How flexibility was described | Stated reasons for office time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remitly | About 50% of working time in the office | Teams could arrange attendance across several days per week, alternating weeks, or another schedule. | Collaboration, colleague interaction, and culture. |
| Morgan Stanley at Work Tech, Calgary | Three office days per week encouraged | El-Malki described the arrangement as highly flexible, with employees choosing remote days so long as they remained productive. | Networking, mentoring, career development, and collaboration. |
At the time of the discussion, Remitly had about 2,700 employees, and El-Malki’s technology organization included more than 760 people globally, according to the report. These are time-bound figures, not current headcounts. The two attendance models are also not directly comparable: they apply to different organizations and settings, and the report does not establish that the schedules produced the same results.
Why ask employees to come in?
The leaders’ case was not simply that working in an office is inherently more productive. They described office time as a chance to collaborate in person, encounter colleagues outside one’s immediate team, learn from more experienced coworkers, build professional connections, and absorb organizational culture. Those can be legitimate goals, but presence alone does not guarantee them. A day spent commuting to take video calls alone may deliver little of the benefit used to justify the trip.
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The useful question for employers is therefore not just “How many days?” but “What should happen because people overlap in person?” Teams might use shared office days for planning, project decisions, mentoring, onboarding, or workshops—work that benefits from interaction. Focused individual tasks may be better suited to quieter settings, whether at home or in a dedicated office space.
Coordinate attendance so the office is not empty
A predictable schedule can matter more than a larger attendance quota. If teammates arrive on different days, each may meet the formal requirement while missing the reason for coming in. The leaders described coordinating attendance, using office “neighborhoods” to place employees near their teams, and offering free lunch on selected days. The report presents lunch partly as a signal that colleagues would be around, not as evidence that food itself improves collaboration.
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For a team, this can mean choosing shared days for the people who need to work together and communicating those days clearly. Neighborhoods or team zones may make it easier to find colleagues, though the report does not provide floor-plan details or evidence that this arrangement improves outcomes. Space should support the work: enough rooms for group discussion and private conversations, quiet areas for concentration, and reliable video facilities so remote participants can contribute rather than merely listen.
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Clear expectations, real flexibility
These examples combine a baseline expectation with latitude over the schedule. That is different from having no policy, and it is also different from requiring everyone to be present on identical days. The distinction matters because “flexible” can mean different things: employees may choose days, teams may set patterns, or managers may make exceptions case by case.
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Employers should make the rules legible and consistently applied. Clarify how teams set shared days, what exceptions are available for disability, health, caregiving, travel, or time-zone constraints, and what happens when an employee cannot attend. Check whether flexibility remains real in performance reviews and promotion decisions. A formally optional remote day is not much of a choice if high-visibility assignments, information, or sponsorship are routinely available only in person.
Team coordination also needs guardrails. Shared office days can improve the chance of useful interaction, but they can create hidden pressure to attend beyond the stated expectation. Junior employees may value mentoring and exposure, as the leaders argued, yet may also have less control over commuting costs, housing, caregiving, or transportation. Employers should test both sides rather than assume that office attendance is automatically developmental.
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Leadership has to make the request reciprocal
Oppenheimer and El-Malki reportedly emphasized being accessible to employees, including junior staff. That is a practical test of whether office time serves employees as well as the organization: if leaders ask people to come in for mentoring or connection, they should be available for those conversations. The report also says both organizations offered mental-health resources and supported employee volunteering. These are reported practices, not proof of improved wellbeing, but they reflect a broader principle: an attendance policy is more credible when it is paired with investment in employees’ development and wellbeing.
Leaders also need to model the policy. If employees are expected to attend for collaboration but decision-makers remain unavailable, or if remote colleagues are routinely excluded from informal decisions, the policy undermines its own rationale. Managers should make important information accessible to everyone and ensure remote employees can participate fully in meetings and career opportunities.
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How to tell whether a policy is working
Badge swipes and desk occupancy can show whether people came in; they cannot show whether the policy achieved its purpose. Before changing attendance expectations, define the outcomes the organization wants and establish a baseline. Relevant measures might include:
- Project cycle time, delivery quality, and delays caused by cross-team dependencies.
- Employee reports of belonging, useful collaboration, and access to information.
- Mentoring participation, new-hire ramp time, and access to development opportunities by work pattern.
- Retention, regrettable turnover, and promotion rates across teams and attendance patterns.
- Office utilization, meeting load, and employee feedback about whether office days are worth the commute.
- Customer or product outcomes where a plausible link to the policy can be assessed.
These are evaluation options, not results reported for Remitly or Morgan Stanley at Work Tech. A practical 60- or 90-day review could compare the intended outcomes with baseline data, survey employees by team and work pattern, identify disparities, and adjust schedules, manager guidance, or office facilities. Tell employees what changed and why. If the data show that a required day is not producing its intended benefit, redesign the day or the policy rather than treating attendance itself as success.
What the examples do—and do not—show
The available account is a report of two leaders’ descriptions at a 2024 event. It does not include controlled comparisons, employee survey results, or long-term data on productivity, retention, innovation, or financial performance. It also does not independently test whether employees experienced the flexibility as equitable. The examples are useful as operating ideas—clear expectations, coordinated schedules, team-oriented spaces, visible leadership—but not as evidence that a particular percentage or number of days is universally optimal.
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Companies considering workplace software can use scheduling, room-booking, and video tools to support a policy, but tools cannot supply its purpose. First decide which people need to overlap, what they should accomplish together, how remote employees will have equal access, and how success will be measured. Then choose technology or space arrangements that solve those specific problems.
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