The Financial Services Company That Proved the RTO Crowd Wrong
Remote Work Secrets - Edition #31
What's Inside:
Why the companies topping the "Best Places to Work" lists aren't the ones mandating badge swipes - and what they're doing instead.
How this one company built trust with their ENTIRE workforce - not just the suits upstairs - and why that distinction matters more than you think.
Why flexibility without accountability is just chaos. The piece of the puzzle most remote-friendly companies completely miss.
This Week's Remote Roles. Fully vetted remote roles for Senior Professionals.
While half of corporate America is losing the plot over return-to-office mandates, one financial services company just claimed the number one spot on Fortune's Best Companies to Work For list. And they did it WITHOUT telling a single employee which days to show up.
Synchrony - the US's largest provider of store credit cards - has just topped that list for the first time. Not just top 10. NUMBER ONE. Rising from 37th place five years ago. The first financial services firm to take that spot in 23 years.
Interesting, right?!
So what are they doing differently to the JPMorgans and Goldman Sachses of the world, who are busy mandating five days back in the office and tracking badge swipes?
Let me tell you…
Little Thing Called Trust
Synchrony operates what they call a "flex model." No required days in. No tracking of hours. No monitoring who's swiping in. And yet their New York City hub at Bryant Park is so full that employees sometimes can't find a seat.
DJ Casto, their Chief HR Officer, put it simply: "We don't tell anybody to do it."
He also had a very pointed message for CEOs enforcing five-day mandates: "I've just been disappointed in how it pivoted. Five days in the office, and then I'm going to check the hours and what you're working on. But you want people motivated and engaged?"
This is BS to me. You either trust your people or you don't. Checking badge swipes while simultaneously asking for innovation and engagement is like asking someone to sprint with their shoelaces tied together.
Flexibility For Everyone - Not Just the Suits
A lot of companies talk about flexibility. But most of them mean flexibility for the salaried folks upstairs - NOT for the contact center staff answering calls on the front line.
Synchrony's flex model applies to EVERYONE. Their contact center workers (the majority of the workforce, by the way) operate under the exact same arrangement as senior vice presidents.
Casto pushed back hard on the idea that flexibility is a white-collar perk. And he backed it up with data - when Synchrony surveyed employees, 85% said they wanted some form of remote option. The policy was built around what the workforce actually asked for.
And they actually listened! [shock!]
Can Performance Be Maintained Without In-Office Presence?
CEO Brian Doubles is honest about the fact that he personally found the fully remote period difficult. He took the top job in January 2021 - alone at home on a Zoom call with his dog. He described it as "very anticlimactic," like the sports teams winning championships in front of empty stadiums that year.
He knew 100% remote was corroding the culture a bit. Relationships and solving problems together - that's what culture is built on. And they weren't losing that entirely, but it wasn't the same.
So rather than swinging to the other extreme and mandating everyone back in, he did something a lot of leaders don't: he thought about it properly.
"If you think about what is the ultimate test in trust, it really is allowing your workforce a flexible hybrid work arrangement."
And it has absolutely paid off. Since committing to permanent hybrid in 2021, Synchrony's earnings per share have climbed nearly fourfold. From roughly $2.27 in 2020 to $9.28 in 2025.
Not bad for a company that "can't possibly maintain performance without people in the office," right?!
You Know Exactly Where You Stand. Always.
Now, before you think this is just a love letter to remote work - it isn't. Because this is where Synchrony does something that a lot of remote-friendly companies don't actually do well.
They moved from annual performance reviews to at least quarterly - often monthly or weekly. No matter where you're sitting in the company, you and your manager both know exactly how you're performing.
Doubles put it really well: "We've all been on teams where someone's not delivering at the same level as others and, you know, that's terrible for the culture. So you've got to nip that in the bud."
THAT is the thing that makes a flex model work. You don't measure time in office. You measure results, impact, outcomes. Did you deliver the project on time? Is the customer happy?
Flexibility without accountability is just chaos. Accountability without flexibility is just control. Synchrony appears to have found the balance between the two.
And Then There's the AI Conversation…
This part genuinely surprised me. Doubles is using the trust they've spent five years building to get ahead of the AI conversation too.
He's not sugarcoating it. His message to employees: "I think you lose credibility if you say it's not going to impact you. It's going to impact every single job on the planet."
But instead of letting that land as a threat, he's pairing the honesty with optimism. AI is coming for the parts of your job you don't like. It'll make you more efficient on the stuff that matters less, and free up your time for the work that actually adds value.
And because their employees already trust them - 80% of Synchrony staff believe AI will create opportunities for them. That's not a number you get by being evasive or corporate-speak-ing your way through the conversation.
Trust, built over time, is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there.
So What Does This Actually Mean For You?
Look, I get it. Not every company can do what Synchrony does. Their entire model - no physical branches, all digital - gives them more latitude than a traditional bank.
But the principle isn't industry-specific. You either believe your people can be trusted to do their jobs, or you don't. You either build accountability around results, or you build it around visibility.
And if you're building it around visibility in 2025 while your competitors are attracting talent from banks who are mandating five days? You've learned nothing.
Doubles said something that stuck with me: "It takes years to earn trust, but you can lose it in seconds."
That's as true for your relationship with your employer as it is for anything else in life.
This Week's Remote Roles
🎯Fully Remote Jobs (No "Fake Remote" Here):
Final Thoughts
If the Synchrony story resonated with you, chances are you're already thinking about your own situation. Maybe you're job hunting and flexibility is a non-negotiable. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to position yourself for a remote role and the whole thing feels a bit higgledy-piggledy right now.
That's exactly what our upcoming Q&A is for.
Bring your questions, bring your frustrations, bring the stuff you've Googled at 11pm and still aren't sure about. We'll be going live with a Remote Work Coach and strategist to get into the stuff that actually matters, and we're using Slido so you can submit and upvote questions ahead of time. The most-asked questions get answered first, so your voice genuinely shapes the conversation.
You can already submit your questions right here 👇
And keep your eye on our LinkedIn tomorrow. We'll be dropping the full event details, including when and how to join us live.
Stay Rebellious,
Michelle & The RR Team