Button partners with WeWork to scale "RemotePlus" workplace strategy, saving over $100,000 per month and optimizing employee engagement

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Apr 20, 2023, 11:00 ET

NEW YORK, April 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Button's RemotePlus workplace strategy is predicated on flexibility and adapting to the expectations employees have in this post-pandemic world. Button also recognizes the intrinsic value in bringing Buttonians together—collaboration and socialization just aren't the same through a computer screen. Employees consistently report that they enjoy working from home, and given the fact that Button has seen both employee satisfaction and productivity increase since introducing remote work, Button has been more than happy to allow employees to continue working from home by default.

The problem, hardly unique to Button, is that employees want to come together—but not on a daily basis. As companies wrestle with the question of how to convince employees to come back into the office to justify rent cost, Button has taken a different approach.

WeWork's All Access membership provides companies with access to hundreds of WeWork's locations worldwide. Members can reserve seats, offices, and meeting rooms, invite guests, and enjoy all of the other perks of an office space, from mailroom services to kombucha on tap that WeWork provides. And while it's not necessarily dedicated company-specific space—members share "community space" with other members and guests—WeWork locations all over New York, San Francisco, and beyond have come to feel like Button's headquarters, because our people are our home.

Button's WeWork membership has been integral in allowing Button to optimize for flexibility. Button has spun up "Coworking Cohorts" in the three "Button Focus Cities" which bring Buttonians together multiple times per week to collaborate together as well as holding periodic "Coworking Days" to bring larger groups together.

Coworking with WeWork has allowed Button to onboard key new hires in person, meet partners and prospects in impressive conference spaces, hold team offsites and whiteboarding sessions, and allow working parents and others a quiet space to work away from home. Button even held a team happy hour on a rooftop terrace overlooking the Manhattan skyline—all included in the very reasonable monthly membership cost.

"As Button revolutionizes the concept of a RemotePlus workplace, WeWork has enabled us to scale and optimize the in-person component of our style of work," said Michael Jaconi, Button's CEO and Co-Founder. "Our employees love the optionality of working at WeWork locations around the country and beyond, and our Board loves the cost savings we've realized by optimizing our footprint while increasing employee satisfaction."

"WeWork is excited to see innovative companies like Button utilizing WeWork All Access to build a bespoke workplace strategy that helps foster collaboration and connection among their distributed workforce," said John Avelli, Tri-state Acting Territory Vice President at WeWork. "All Access is designed to provide companies the pinnacle of flexibility as they position themselves for the future and we're confident that Button's approach will set their team up for continued success."

WeWork's expansive footprint has been especially integral to employee satisfaction with Button's coworking program. In New York City, for example, WeWork has over 70 locations spread widely around the city. And even though almost half of Button's employees live in and around New York, they are widely dispersed around the city and metropolitan area, making flexibility when choosing coworking locations especially valuable.

With the ability to work anywhere given Button's remote footprint, employees also love having an office space when working away from home. Traveling for the week? Get out of the hotel room and have a productive day at a desk around other professionals. Button's employees have called WeWork locations in Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and even London and Tokyo their temporary home bases. That's the kind of geographic reach which supercharges not just employee engagement but also recruitment, and it's the kind of flexibility which wouldn't have been possible for Button when operating out of several highly costly and dedicated office spaces.

Since rolling out its coworking program in partnership with WeWork, Button has seen employee satisfaction increase by double digits in quarterly "Button Pulse Check" surveys. Employees routinely cite the ability to blend work from home with in-person interaction at WeWork locations as a key arbiter of their happiness and something which they'd like to see the company double down on moving forward.

"The key to a successful RemotePlus workplace is flexibility, and WeWork offers Button the ability to continuously evolve the idea of in-person collaboration as we expand, both in terms of headcount and geography," said Jonathan Kraft, Button's Senior Director of People Operations and Legal. "We want our employees to do their best work where they're comfortable, happy, productive, and engaged, and WeWork offers us an ideal balance to facilitate work for all."

Of course, Button's approach may not be for every type of company. There is certainly something to be said about dedicated office space but the tradeoffs – the ability to reinvest so much more capital into the business and Button's employees, the flexibility afforded by not being beholden to a long-term lease, demonstrated employee satisfaction with the ability to balance work from home with occasional in-person interaction (and, of course,the cost savings) – more than offset any degree of FOMO as Button watches other businesses start to go back to the office on a more permanent basis.

As a result of this new strategy, Button was recently named one of BuiltIn's Best Places to Work in the USA, and the #3 Best Fully Remote Startup, and employees regularly cite Button's partnership with WeWork as a leading reason why. As Button continues to grow (currently hiring for roles across the org), the company has the ability to expand its All Access membership both vertically and horizontally (Button's next Focus City could be anywhere in the USA, after all), and is very excited to double down on this essential piece of its RemotePlus workplace strategy.

About Button

Button is a cookieless personalization and optimization mobile experience platform used by the world's most innovative companies. Button's platform is underpinned by two products: PostTap and Tap.

PostTap is an AI powered traffic optimization product that enables marketers to maximize the outcomes they drive from their traffic through better experiences and conversion, increased app installs and usage, and enhanced visibility into purchases driven. Tap is a traffic enablement product that supports developers building monetization of their traffic through commerce - leveraging affiliate and card linked offers.

Button has driven over $8 billion in mobile commerce to date, has been named a best place to work every year since the company's founding in 2014 and is backed by Greycroft, Redpoint, Norwest, Icon Ventures, and Capital One.

SOURCE Button