Some tech companies are still grappling with remote vs. in-office work—and there’s no consensus answer

Four and a half years after the pandemic drove employees out of the office in favor of remote work, the workplace landscape is still shifting as companies figure out what works best for them long term.

The question is especially relevant for the tech industry, which embraced remote work early in the pandemic. In the Indianapolis area, some firms continue to operate remotely and say they wouldn’t have it any other way. Others, though, say their companies run better when employees are in the office at least some portion of the week.

On one end of the spectrum is Carmel-based Software Engineering Professionals Inc., a software development firm that does business as SEP and requires all employees to be in the office five days a week.

“Our philosophy has always been, we work better when we’re together—and physically together,” said SEP’s chief operating officer, Traci Dossett.

On the other end is Indianapolis-based Givelify, which launched in 2014 and offers a digital donation platform for faith groups, not-for-profits and causes. The company, which has about 120 employees in the United States and several other countries, decided in October 2020 to go fully remote.

Givelify does have a physical office downtown—it was in the process of moving into the space when the pandemic hit—but employees rarely use it, said founder and CEO Wale Mafolasire.

“We’ve found success in remote work and don’t envision a future in which we will ever go back,” said Mafolasire, an IUPUI graduate who now lives in Dallas.

Many companies say their thinking on remote work is evolving.

That’s the case for online marketing firm Pneuma Media LLC, which is based in Denver and has an office in Fishers. The company, which launched in November 2019, has operated as a remote company and never had a physical office until it began leasing space at Launch Fishers this summer. The company has a team of 27, nine of whom are employees; the rest are contractors.

In July, Pneuma’s five-person leadership team met at Launch Fishers—the first time they had all met in person. The experience was a revelation about the power of in-office connection, said Pneuma founder and CEO David Riggs. Riggs grew up in the Geist area and graduated from Wabash College, though he currently lives in Denver.

Using a private office and a whiteboard to brainstorm about a business problem that had been plaguing Pneuma for months, Riggs said, the group came up with a solution within a couple of hours.

“That problem was not going to be solved through five-, 10-, 15-minute asynchronous [online] huddles here and there,” Riggs said. “It was going to be solved by getting into the same room and talking about it live.”

Based on that experience, Pneuma quickly opened an office in Denver as well. The company now operates on a hybrid schedule, encouraging employees to work at their local Fishers or Denver office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Pneuma doesn’t mandate that employees come into the office, Riggs said, but it also hasn’t had to offer incentives to lure people in. “The only thing we’ve done is do good work when we’re together, and that’s been enough of a hook to keep people coming back.”

The company has had two months of record revenue since July, Riggs said. Being in the office isn’t the only reason, but it’s a factor, he said.

‘Down the middle’

Mark Firmin, the Indianapolis-based president and chief operating officer at Long Beach, California-based Acom Solutions Inc., is another tech executive who said his attitudes about remote work are shifting.

Acom Solutions is a holding company whose current portfolio includes the financial tech firm eTreem and MICR, a provider of specialty printers and printing supplies. Acom Solutions recently sold one of its other holdings, Acom Software, to Montreal-based Valsoft Corp. Inc. That divestiture was announced Sept. 9.

Acom has a combined 75 employees, with offices in Long Beach, suburban Atlanta, Vietnam and Indianapolis. Most employees live in either California or Georgia. About a dozen are in Vietnam. Firmin is the only one in Indianapolis.

Pre-pandemic, Firmin said, employees all worked in the office. After operating remotely during the pandemic, some employees came back to the office.

“What we found is, literally 50% of the employees want to be back in the office and 50% don’t. It’s literally down the middle,” he said. “What we’re starting to realize, though, is that I’m not sure that’s the right approach for the collaboration that we need as a team.”

Firmin said he doesn’t intend to force employees back into the office. But there are other ways the company could tip things toward in-office work. Firmin is actively seeking companies for Acom to acquire. He’s looking nationwide but hopes to find a suitable acquisition target in the Indianapolis area—providing a chance to set different expectations with a new pool of local employees.

“We are more interested in finding a concentration of team members and moving away from having a disparate team,” Firmin said.

On the national level, San Francisco-based Salesforce is an example of a company that is also moving back toward in-office work.

In 2021, Salesforce Chief People Officer Brent Hyder declared that “an immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our towers” and that “the 9-to-5 workday is dead.” (Hyder left Salesforce last year and now is the chief people officer at Denver-based apparel company VF Corp.)

But in a post on its website in July, Salesforce said, “We believe being together in person deepens relationships, sparks innovation, fosters learning, and strengthens culture—ultimately, resulting in better business outcomes for our customers and for us.”

That post also laid out the expectations for in-office work for the company’s three categories of hybrid positions: office based, office flex and remote.

Most Salesforce employees fall into the office-flex category and will be expected to report to the office at least three days a week starting in October, the Indianapolis Star reported in August.

Committing to a path

While some companies are still evolving their thinking on the matter, SEP is an example of a company that has committed to in-office operations.

SEP made a key decision early in the pandemic. It had outgrown its former Carmel office and needed to decide whether to move forward with its plans to build a new one. “April of 2020 was when we needed to say, ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ So we kind of had our ‘come-to-Jesus moment’ earlier than most people did,” Dossett said.

After operating remotely during the first few months of the pandemic, SEP reopened its office in June 2020. About half of employees voluntarily returned to the office for at least one day a week, Dossett said. The company made full-time, in-office work mandatory starting in December 2021, when it moved to its new office at 16080 Westfield Blvd.

The company took steps to welcome employees back, she said. It offered tours of the new office, organized team lunches and left welcome gifts on employees’ desks.

It was an effort to rebuild the workplace culture that had eroded somewhat despite the virtual gatherings that took place during the pandemic, Dossett said. “I feel for the companies that are trying to do this now.”

A percentage of SEP’s employees are fresh-out-of-college hires, she said, and these employees in particular have expressed their desire for in-office work so they can learn from their colleagues.

Indianapolis-based software company Authenticx, which has chosen to operate as a hybrid company, also had a real estate decision to make early in the pandemic.

The company’s software platform allows health care and insurance customers to analyze high volumes of calls, emails and other customer interactions to glean insights on how to improve their operations.

Authenticx, which launched in 2018, had leased a small office in Carmel in January 2020 for its 15 or so employees. By the time that lease expired 18 months later, the company had outgrown that space and decided to move to a larger one in Indianapolis. It opened that office—its current home—in June 2022. Then, six months later, it expanded into an adjacent space to accommodate continuing growth.

“We had seen enough signs that employees would stick around that we went ahead and went with the extension,” said Authenticx founder and CEO Amy Brown.

Authenticx has about 130 employees, about 70% of whom live in the Indianapolis area. The others live elsewhere and work primarily remotely. The company operates on a hybrid model; depending on the day of the week, there might be anywhere from 15 to 50 people in the office. Managers have set certain days—meeting days, for instance—when employees are asked to be in the office, but there are no mandates, Brown said.

And twice a year, Authenticx has all-company gatherings where everyone is together. The company pays the travel expenses for remote employees to attend, Brown said.

The hybrid approach works for Authenticx, she said, but she realizes other companies might make different decisions.

“I really don’t think there’s a right or a wrong [approach] necessarily,” Brown said. “I think every company and culture is different, and I can certainly respect companies that have taken a more hard line one way or the other.”•