Affinity Plus leaders were firm believers in in-person work when, in January 2020, employee interest prompted a pilot allowing one team to work remotely one day a week.
“Basically, they had to really prove themselves in order to work that one day a week remotely,” said Chief Talent Officer Julie Cosgrove. “We really believed in in-person work; we believed it drove connection and relationship and performance and outcome.”
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the St. Paul-based bank, like employers across the globe, had no choice but to send workers home.
Fast forward to today, and Affinity, ranked fifth on the Star Tribune Top Workplaces large company list, has employees in 19 states while before, all but two members of its 600-person staff lived in Minnesota. Companywide, most employees are “virtual-first,” working nearly all their hours outside of offices, Cosgrove said.
“Had the pandemic never happened, I don’t know that we would be working in this way,” she said. “In January of 2020, we dipped our pinky toe in the water of remote work, and that’s all we were willing to do. Having the pandemic as the platform for change allowed us to test drive things that we would have never done with that same speed or that same drive or that same volume of people.”
Though the pandemic is in the rearview mirror and the “Great Resignation” has subsided, the labor market remains tight, and companies still struggle to attract qualified applicants. To find and keep the right people, employers have settled into a new world where remote work is the norm. A third of Minnesota workers worked at least partially from home in 2023, a higher proportion than surrounding states and the U.S. as a whole, according to a Minneapolis Fed analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
But flexibility is about more than just whether employees come into the office, and benefits that were practically unheard of four years ago — from flexible hours to a four-day work week — are increasingly part of the package.
Twin Cities-based Walser Automotive Group this year condensed its five-day work week into four longer days. Affinity shifted its fully paid MBA program at Metropolitan State University from in-person to virtual when the pandemic began, allowing more employees to participate. American Solutions for Business (ASB) is updating its Glenwood, Minn., offices with both permanent and part-time workspaces based on individual needs.