Imagine you're a CEO. It's 2024, and you've just sent the all-staff email. Five days. Office. Non-negotiable. You frame it as culture. As collaboration. As the thing that made your company great before everyone started wearing slippers to standups. Your communications team polishes the language. Your leadership team nods along. The memo goes out.
Somewhere in Stamford, Connecticut, a financial services company reads that memo and thinks: hm, interesting choice.
That company is Synchrony — and you've almost certainly used their product without knowing it. They're the biggest provider of store credit cards in the United States, the invisible infrastructure behind the "apply for a card and save 20% today" pitch at the checkout. Not exactly a flashy brand. Not a Silicon Valley darling. Not the company anyone expected to win this particular race.
But in 2025, Fortune and Great Place to Work handed Synchrony the most coveted workplace trophy in America: No. 1 Best Company to Work For in the United States. Not in financial services. Not in their region. In the entire country. The first financial firm to top that list in 23 years — and they got there by doing almost the exact opposite of what Amazon, JPMorgan, and Google have spent the past year loudly insisting is necessary.
Their Chief Human Resources Officer's response to the RTO (return-to-office) wave? "Did we learn nothing?"
That's not a rhetorical flourish. That's a genuine question. And depending on where you're reading this from — a home office, a commuter train, or a hot-desked open-plan floor you're required to be sitting in — it might be one worth sitting with.
