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About 90 Patagonia customer service employees working remotely across the country were given three days to make a big decision this week: Move within 60 miles of one of seven company hubs by the end of September, or exit their roles.
The company, which has about 2,000 team members in the U.S., employees 255 people on the customer service (CX) team, which got a lot larger during the pandemic and is now overstaffed.
Plus, the majority of CX employees already lived nearby one of the hubs, which are located in Reno, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Atlanta.
“Like most companies, we’ve been figuring this out ,” said J.J. Huggins PR and communications manager. “Culture is so important to Patagonia – our offices, warehouses and stores are places where employees come together for a sense of community. They had lost some of that sense of belonging.”
The move has been getting a lot of attention in the past few days, partly due to the fact that Patagonia told employees about the new policy on Tuesday, and asked them to decide their path forward by Friday.
Huggins said Patagonia is working with anyone who needs more time to decide what’s next for them. “We understand that not everyone is able to pack up and move. For people who can’t do that or don’t want to, we offer them a generous severance package that covers pay, health insurance, bonuses, a stipend for technology and career support for finding a new job,” he said.
For the CX employees who do decide to move, Ventura, Calif.-based Patagonia is offering up to $4,000 in moving expenses.
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In the meantime, the majority of Patagonia’s employees are working in offices three days a week, and have been for some time. (Mondays and Friday are optional in-office days, and the hybrid schedule mirrors many other corporate structures that have been implemented post COVID.)
As for the customer service arm of the company, that had been centralized in Reno before the pandemic. But in the COVID era, Patagonia needed to staff up, and hired people all over the country and across time zones.
Huggins said that move proved to pay off, with more people available at different times during the day, and Patagonia is confident it can continue to provide the same level of service with fewer employees. And it believes the geographic diversity of the hubs will be an advantage.
Patagonia was one of the first companies to shut down in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, closing all stores, offices and website operations.
In 2022, company founder Yvon Chouinard announced he was transferring ownership of the privately-held business to a nonprofit and specially designated trust. The move is meant to ensure that the company’s profits are completely reinvested in the business or used to further values and goals related to the environment.
As Chouinard put it at the time, “Earth is now our only shareholder.”
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