Revolut Ends Remote-First Working for Graduates

What happens when the perk you used to recruit people becomes the thing you take back? Revolut is about to find out.

The fintech is scrapping its "remote-first" policy for graduate hires, who from 2027 must spend at least three days a week in the office, the Financial Times reports.

It is a pointed retreat for a company that markets remote working to candidates under the banner "No ping pong tables or bean bag chairs, just benefits you actually want", and lets staff work abroad for 120 days a year.

Chief Executive Nik Storonsky was remote work's loudest champion. He told staff last year that Revolut cared "more about what you do than where you do it", and that the policy would hold as long as people stayed productive.

With more than 300 graduates and interns joining this year, the reversal touches the core of the employer brand.

What is changing for Revolut

Revolut has told incoming graduates of the new rule, according to people familiar with the matter. Until now, juniors could choose to work from home, the office or abroad, in line with the firm's standard policy. The company says in a statement that the change applies only to graduates and interns joining in 2027, adding that "for all other employees, our remote-first policy is unchanged."

Revolut insists this is about growth, not savings. The early years of a career, it argues, "benefit from in-person collaboration and mentoring", which is why the youngest staff lose the remote-work option while everyone else keeps it.

One person close to Revolut told the FT that graduates who finish the programme and take full-time roles move on to "standard, remote-first contracts".

Flexibility, the person added, is "a driver of productivity, not a trade-off against it".

The evidence cuts both ways

The research gives Revolut some cover. A study in Science led by University of Virginia economist Emma Harrington drew on more than 588,000 workers. It found remote work explained a third of the rise in US mental distress from 2011 to 2024, hitting those who live alone hardest.

Almost 90% of people in remote-capable jobs spend the workday entirely alone, and about half say they feel less connected to colleagues, with juniors losing the mentors they once learned from.

Others push back hard. Stanford economist Nick Bloom, whose own experiments show remote work lifting well-being, told USA TODAY the answer is choice, not mandates. Staff who work from home, he said, "can reduce commuting stress, control their time better and have more time with friends and family". Even so, a middle ground beckons. One study cited by USA TODAY found that bringing remote staff in just one day a month raised productivity by 8% and cut attrition by a third.

A wider return-to-office reckoning

Revolut, which employs about 11,000 people and moved into a new Canary Wharf headquarters late last year, is hardly alone. Across finance, banks have clawed back pandemic-era hybrid working, and the bluntest voices sit at the top.

JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon has said remote work "doesn't work for young kids or spontaneity or management", while Goldman Sachs' CEO David Solomon has called it an "aberration".

Revolut, valued at US$75bn in a share sale last year and eyeing a US$200bn listing, is edging toward their camp, at least for the staff it most wants to mould.

For HR, the episode shows the cost of a U-turn. A benefit sold as central to the brand is hard to withdraw without bruising trust, even when the reasoning, better mentoring, is sound.