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Bruno Solari spent his August traveling all around Spain, starting with a week in Ibiza, continuing on to Madrid, Málaga, Marbella and Barcelona, before finally returning to Ibiza for a bachelor party. He also managed to squeeze in a few meetings and client calls all throughout. Solari, founder and CEO of the New York City-based PR firm SolComms, was among his company's 53 employees enjoying their inaugural "Work from Anywhere August." Other employees logged on from all over the U.S. (the Jersey Shore, the Hamptons, Florida) and the world (Berlin, Prague, London, Portugal). "I was in Spain the entire month of August, and I would have felt like a hypocrite if I was going to be there and making my team be in-office," Solari, 33, tells CNBC Make It. "So I thought, 'OK, I'm doing this myself. I'm going to grant that flexibility to the entire agency.'" The end-of-summer experiment felt like a worthwhile risk to the 3-year-old startup: Employee surveys of the trial indicate boosted productivity, work-life balance and happiness, while the business also saw a modest revenue boost. It also runs counter to several big companies scaling back on remote-work flexibility in a job market where employers have the upper hand. "I think people were surprised that I went for it," Solari says. Testing a new remote-work perk Four weeks of fully remote work from anywhere in the world is a bold move for the millennial founder, who came up in PR agencies at the height of the hustle culture era and says he holds more "traditional" workplace values, like building company culture through in-person interactions rather than "through a screen" of fully remote work. Since its founding in 2023, SolComms has operated with a four days in-office requirement, with Fridays at home that end at 3 p.m. most weeks (and 12 p.m. during the summer). Some 25% of full-time U.S. workers work in a hybrid arrangement, with the most common requirements being three days in the office, followed by four, according to a recent report from Owl Labs, a video-conferencing technology company, which surveyed 2,000 people in July. Most, 65%, work onsite full time, and 10% work remotely full time. Solari says every year his company surveys its own employees about the perks and benefits they want, and every year they ask for more work-from-home days. Wary of granting another remote working day during the week, Solari thought to offer 100% flexibility within a one-month period instead. He and his leadership team came up with the idea in January, announced it to employees in February, and spent the next six months coming up with best practices to make sure everyone was set up for remote success. Among those guidelines: Stick to 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EST working hours, keep cameras on for all meetings, dress for meetings as if you were going into the office, use Slack status updates liberally, take lunch and other breaks, and no sensitive calls or screens in public spaces. You don't need to be chained to a desk to prove that you're doing a good job.Bruno SolariSolComms founder and CEO SolComms also communicated their remote-August plans to the agency's 80-plus clients across healthcare, tech and AI, and consumer brands, says Natalie Valicenti, 30, the company's associate vice president of operations, who split her remote month across Rhode Island and Minnesota. Businesses are scaling back workplace flexibility The SolComms benefit comes at a time when many company leaders are scaling back on employee flexibility and benefits, and during a tightening labor market where employers have the upper-hand. In September, Uber announced plans to cut about 3,300 corporate jobs, as well as scale down its remote workforce and tighten in-office rules. Disney said it would require more employees to report to the office four days a week and later announced layoffs of about 300 employees. The five-day return-to-office creep has been growing for several years. The share of Fortune 500 companies requiring five days in the office nearly doubled from mid-2024 to mid-2025, from 13% to 24%, according to research from Flex Index, a resource within the advisory firm Work Forward that analyzes office requirements data. But for SolComms, the risks of loosening office requirements for a month seem to have paid off. Twenty-one employees answered a survey following the inaugural remote month, with 76% saying they were more productive, 90% saying they maintained high work-life balance, and 100% saying they want Work from Anywhere August back next year, according to documents reviewed by Make It. Several say the experience helped them strengthen their communication and self-management skills, and a lot of people said cutting their commute times was the biggest draw. There were also some downsides, like staffers saying they felt tied to their computers and found it hard to step away, whereas it felt more natural to take breaks for lunch, coffee or a walk if they were in the office. Solari says he sees this "internal pressure to be available" as a common struggle with remote work. "I think it's a matter of continuing to let employees know that we're flexible," he says. "You don't need to be chained to a desk to prove that you're doing a good job, and ultimately, it's not always the person who's the first to respond who's the power player in producing results." Though not the goal, Solari says, the business also saw financial benefits: Revenue increased by a modest 4% revenue from July to August, and jumped 12% from August to September. Solari is already committed to a return of the program in August 2027. "[We're] 1,000% doing it again, without a doubt," he says.
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