American business is splitting into two distinct camps, and the divide isn’t about industry or geography—it’s about size. While headlines focus on Fortune 100 CEOs demanding office returns, a quieter revolution is happening among smaller companies that employ over half the US workforce.
The latest Flex Index data reveal a stark reality: 67% of companies with fewer than 500 employees offer full flexibility to their workers, meaning they have no policy-driven mandate, while 45% of the Fortune 100 are requiring employees to be in the office four or five days a week.
New research from BCG and Flex Index shows that fully flexible companies grew revenues 1.7 times faster than mandate-driven peers between 2019 and 2024. Even adjusting for industry and company size, flexible firms grew 1.3X faster annually than their peers. The data suggests we’re not just witnessing a workplace trend—we’re watching a fundamental shift in competitive dynamics.
The great divergence
We tend to equate headlines about a Fortune 100 company CEO increasing a mandate as a marker for most employees, when in fact US Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that smaller firms (those with fewer than 1,000 employees) provide half the jobs in the US.
They’re also all of the growth: smaller firms accounted for nearly all net employment growth in the first half of 2025. While Fortune 100 companies tighten policies and shed workers, smaller competitors are expanding their talent pools by offering what larger firms won’t: autonomy.
The irony is striking. Large companies with sophisticated HR departments and extensive management layers are reverting to presence-based oversight, while smaller firms with fewer resources trust employees to deliver results regardless of location.
Why flexibility drives growth
Fully flexible companies don’t just attract different talent—they operate differently. When you can’t monitor presence, you’re forced to focus on outcomes. When you can hire anywhere, you access broader talent pools. When you trust employees with autonomy, they often exceed expectations rather than meet minimum requirements.
“Flexible work policies are a sign of organizational cultures that trust employees, measure impact over input, and recognize that different people need different conditions to do their best work,” explains BCG senior managing director Debbie Lovich.
This advantage compounds over time. Many companies that started with flexible policies during the pandemic then spent five years getting beyond the thinking that a flexible-work policy is alone the solution. Instead, firms like Atlassian, Synchrony Financial and Zillow developed management practices around business outcomes rather than just the traditional managerial oversight. They’ve learned to hire for skills rather than credentials, coordinate across time zones rather than conference rooms, and measure success through performance rather than presence–practices that are scalable in an increasingly digital and distributed world.
The Fortune 100 paradox
Large companies face genuine coordination challenges that smaller firms don’t. Managing 100,000 employees across multiple time zones requires different approaches than managing 100. But the response of many—mandating four or five days a week office presence—may be creating more problems than it solves.
This approach assumes that physical proximity solves coordination problems, but many large companies actually have teams distributed across cities anyway. When your product manager in New York works daily with developers in Austin and designers in Denver, five-day office mandates don’t create collaboration—they create resentment.
The performance data suggest this approach backfires. Every study done of hybrid work shows parity in some areas and advantages to hybrid in others: higher connection, engagement, productivity and retention. Even among executives who’ve imposed return-to-office mandates, only one in three believes the policy had “even a slight positive impact on productivity,” according to Atlassian’s research. Meanwhile, their flexible competitors are growing faster–perhaps driven by more engaged employees.
What size teaches us about management
The divide reveals something fundamental about management philosophy. Small companies, with limited resources for oversight, have always relied more heavily on outcomes-based management. They hire carefully, set clear expectations, and measure results because they can’t afford to micromanage.
Large companies, with layers of management and sophisticated monitoring systems, have the infrastructure to track presence and activity. But having the ability to monitor doesn’t mean monitoring improves performance. The BCG data suggest the opposite: companies that focus on outcomes rather than oversight grow faster.
This doesn’t mean all large companies are doomed to underperform. Those that embrace flexibility—companies like Airbnb and Allstate—show that size doesn’t preclude agility. But they’ve had to consciously choose trust over control, outcomes over activity, and results over presence.
The competitive implications
The different approaches could lead to lasting competitive advantages for companies that embrace learning over control. Organizations are splitting between those falling back on familiar command-and-control approaches and those building new capabilities around trust, outcomes and adaptation..
This divide will likely widen as companies grapple with AI integration and other technological shifts. The same leadership qualities that enable effective flexible work—trust in employees, focus on outcomes, willingness to experiment—are essential for navigating rapid technological change.
Companies doubling down on attendance monitoring while simultaneously urging AI adoption face a fundamental contradiction. You can’t demand innovation from people you don’t trust.
The data suggest which approach will win. As smaller, more flexible companies continue driving employment growth and outperforming their rigid counterparts, the question isn’t whether flexibility works—it’s whether large organizations will adapt their management philosophy to match.
For executives still focused on badge swipes and seat occupancy, the message is clear: your competition isn’t just cherry-picking top talent. They’re creating the conditions where that talent thrives.