I'll never ask my employees to return to the office: CEO of a remote-first company

Mike Landau started his company, Park My Fleet, during the Covid pandemic in 2020. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Mike Landau strongly believed that employees need to be in the office to build the team and work efficiently, but that changed completely during the Covid pandemic. "I was no longer geographically restricted to recruiting and acquiring talent," the founder and CEO of New York-based Park My Fleet told Business Insider.

He had launched the company in 2020 and due to the lockdown, he had to start it remotely and rely on the experience and maturity of the recruits to get the job done right from home.

"Since then, I've found that you don't need to be in the office to have cohesion among teams and execute; you can be successful without being together physically," he said.

Landau also discovered the benefits of being able to hire people from across the world. "From a recruitment perspective, the world is my oyster. I like that employees don't have to think about their commute or can still do the school pickup, which helps their work-life balance," he told the publication, adding that the company has a very high employee retention rate.

Most of Park My Fleet's employees are based in the US, but there are tech teams in Israel and Costa Rica. The company also has a work-from-anywhere policy. "I'm happy for them to do that," Landau said. "I've worked from hotels on the beach and in Europe while vacationing."

He, however, clarified that there are roles that need people to work on vehicles, and sales employees to carry out client visits, but everyone else is remote.

Commenting on Amazon enforcing a return-to-office mandate, Landau said that the arrangement might work for the tech giant but "as the CEO of a company growing nimbly and trying to get the right people in the right roles," remote work is the best for him.

"I have no intention of mandating a return to the office," he said.

Read more: 91% CEOs in India want to promote in-office employees over remote workers: Survey