22 Companies With The Best Work-Life Balance (2023)

Companies with the best work-life balance (2023)

This post was written in May of 2022. It was updated in February of 2023 to highlight this year’s companies with the best work-life balance. It was updated again in September of 2023 for formatting and information (the 2023 winners were not changed).

A list of companies with the best work-life balance usually comes out biased. Best is subjective, after all. I didn’t want to add another subjective list of the best work-life balance companies to the internet, so here’s how I went about it instead. We picked nine specific employee benefits that show a company’s dedication to work-life balance. Click here to jump down in the article to view the criteria. Or…

Use the links below to jump to the section that interests you the most:

 

Companies With The Best Work-Life Balance: 2023 Gold Winners

Here are our 2023 gold-medal winners for the companies with the best work-life balance. There are just 22 of them:

Rank

Company

Work-Life Benefits

Jobs

1

Buffer

???? Remote
⏰ 4-Day Work Week 
✉️ Asynchronous
???? Unlimited PTO
✈️ Work From Anywhere
???? Paid Sabbaticals
???? Paid Maternity Leave

???? Home Office Stipends

2

Shopify

???? Remote
⏰ 4-Day Work Week 
✉️ Asynchronous
???? Unlimited PTO
✈️ Work From Anywhere
???? Paid Sabbaticals
???? Paid Maternity Leave

???? Home Office Stipends

3

Automattic

???? Remote
✉️ Asynchronous
???? Unlimited PTO
???? Paid Sabbaticals
???? Paid Maternity Leave

???? Home Office Stipends

4

VMware

???? Remote
???? Unlimited PTO
???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

5

Instacart

???? Remote
???? Unlimited PTO
???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? Home Office Stipends

6

Zillow

???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

???? Home Office Stipends

7

REI

???? Remote
???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? 401K Match

8

Adobe

???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

9

Basecamp

???? Remote
⏰ 4-Day Work Week

???? Home Office Stipends

10

Doist

???? Remote
✉️ Asynchronous

???? Home Office Stipends

11

GitHub

???? Unlimited PTO
✈️ Work From Anywhere

???? 401K Match

12

Gitlab

???? Remote
✉️ Asynchronous
???? Unlimited PTO

13

Hotjar

???? Remote
✉️ Asynchronous

???? Home Office Stipends

14

Hubspot

???? Unlimited PTO
???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? Home Office Stipends

15

???? Unlimited PTO

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

16

Oracle

???? Unlimited PTO

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

17

Tulip

⏰ 4-Day Work Week 
???? Unlimited PTO

???? Home Office Stipends

18

Uber

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

???? Home Office Stipends

19

Microsoft

???? Unlimited PTO
???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? 401K Match

20

✈️ Work From Anywhere
???? Paid Maternity Leave

???? Home Office Stipends

21

Paypal

???? Paid Sabbaticals

???? 401K Match
???? Paid Maternity Leave

22

✈️ Work From Anywhere

???? 401K Match

???? Home Office Stipends

 

You’ll see some work-life balance companies on the list that have had notable rounds of layoffs in the last year. For those companies, we factored in layoffs to the rank but we did not remove companies due to layoffs. We used layoffs.fyi to sort companies on our list with the highest amount layoffs as percentage of total workforce. The companies with the highest layoff percentages were moved lower on our list. In other words, recent layoffs are a tie breaker but not a deal breaker.

See Also: 


 

Companies With The Good Work-Life Balance: 2023 Silver Winners

As of the time of writing this, Buildremote has 3,920 companies in our database where we track the unique employee benefits that set the criteria for this list. Of the 3,920, our 2023 silver award-winning companies (just 41 of them) offer two of these employee benefits. 

  1. 15Five: remote work, asynchronous work
  2. 3M: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  3. Accenture: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  4. Almanac: asynchronous work, home office stipend
  5. Alt: unlimited PTO, home office stipend
  6. Amazon: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  7. AMEX: work from anywhere, great maternity leave
  8. Apple: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  9. Autodesk: paid sabbaticals, great 401K match plan
  10. Biogen: paid sabbaticals, great 401K match plan
  11. Bunny Studio: remote work, 4-day work week
  12. Capital One: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  13. Charles Schwab: paid sabbaticals, great 401K match plan
  14. Chegg: unlimited PTO, home office stipend
  15. Cockroach Labs: unlimited PTO, home office stipend
  16. Convertkit: remote work, home office stipend
  17. DigitalOcean: unlimited PTO, home office stipend
  18. EY: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  19. Fidelity Investments: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  20. Float: remote work, asynchronous work
  21. Frontastic: remote work, asynchronous work
  22. G2i: remote work, 4-day work week
  23. General Electric: unlimited PTO, great 401K match plan
  24. Goldman Sachs: unlimited PTO, great 401K match plan
  25. Gumroad: remote work, asynchronous work
  26. KPMG: great 401K match plan, great maternity leave
  27. LiveControl: unlimited PTO, home office stipend
  28. MailerLite: remote work, asynchronous work
  29. Mayer Brown: paid sabbaticals, great maternity leave
  30. Maze: remote work, asynchronous work
  31. Mediavine: remote work, home office stipend
  32. Patagonia: paid sabbaticals, great maternity leave
  33. PwC: work from anywhere, paid sabbaticals
  34. Skillshare: paid sabbaticals, home office stipend
  35. TeamSnap: remote work, unlimited PTO
  36. Thoughtworks: paid sabbaticals, great 401K match plan
  37. Toggl: remote work, asynchronous work
  38. Twitter: unlimited PTO, great maternity leave
  39. Webflow: remote work, home office stipend
  40. Yac: 4-day work week, asynchronous work
  41. Zapier: remote work, home office stipend


 

Criteria: How We Ranked The Best Work-Life Balance Companies

These are the employee benefits we analyzed to determine if a company is committed to work-life balance:

  1. 🌎 Remote: Remote companies have removed the office and the commute which returns time and flexibility back to the employee. See our full list of companies going remote.
  2. ⏰ Four-day work week: These companies have removed a work day completely (and usually reduce weekly hours to 32) to show their commitment to work-life balance. See our full list of four-day companies.
  3. ✉️ Asynchronous work: Colleagues work on their own schedule (not necessarily at the same time), allowing them to personally manage their work-life balance. See our full list of async-first companies.
  4. 🌴 Unlimited PTO: Employees can request off as many vacation days as they choose without a cap, showing the company’s commitment to balance. See our full list of unlimited PTO companies, or remote companies with unlimited PTO.
  5. ✈️ Work from anywhere: The company has a program in place that allows employees to perform their jobs outside of the office, the home, and outside their home state or country. See our full list of work-from-anywhere companies.
  6. 📕 Paid sabbaticals: Employees can take an extended break from work (like a month), retain their salary, and not use vacation days. See our full list of companies with sabbaticals.
  7. 💰 401K match plan: Pay is an important part of work-life balance. Note: Since average and median salaries at large companies aren’t useful (the range is far too wide), we used the 401K match percentage to represent a company’s willingness to invest financially in their employees regardless of role or salary. Companies on this list offer a 3% 401K match as a minimum (some companies go much higher). See our full list of the best companies for 401k match.
  8. 🍼 Paid maternity leave: Companies on this list offer mothers at least 16 weeks of paid leave for the birth of a child. Note: Maternity leave policies are more publicly available than “parental” or “paternal” policies. Therefore, we use maternity leave as a barometer for the company’s approach to all parent leave. See our full list of companies with 16+ weeks of maternity leave.
  9. 💻 Home office stipends: These companies invest in the comfort and functionality of their employees’ home offices through stipends –  a fixed sum of money paid from employer to employee to be used for home office equipment. See our full list of companies that offer work-from-home stipends.

(Want to see a much bigger list? Check out our awards for the companies with the best benefits. Those awards were was built on 20 of the best employee benefits.)

 

Best Work-Life Balance Companies: 2022 Winners

These are the 12 organizations that made our list of the best companies for work-life balance in 2022. These companies offer two or more work-life balance benefits. Objectively speaking, these were the companies with the best work-life balance based on benefits they offered in 2022.

Rank

Company

Work-Life Benefits

Jobs

1

Buffer

⏰ 4-Day Work Week 
🌎 Remote
✉️ Asynchronous
🌴 Unlimited PTO
📕 Paid Sabbaticals

2

Hubspot

🌎 Remote
🌴 Unlimited PTO
📕 Paid Sabbaticals

3

Microsoft

⏰ 4-Day Work Week*
🌎 Remote
📕 Paid Sabbaticals

(*Japan Only)

4

VMware

🌎 Remote
🌴 Unlimited PTO
📕 Paid Sabbaticals

5

Basecamp

⏰ 4-Day Work Week
🌎 Remote

6

Shopify

⏰ 4-Day Work Week
🌎 Remote

7

Gitlab

✉️ Asynchronous
🌴 Unlimited PTO

8

Instacart

🌎 Remote
🌴 Unlimited PTO

9

LinkedIn

🌎 Remote
🌴 Unlimited PTO

10

Adobe

🌎 Remote
📕 Paid Sabbaticals

11

Intel

🌎 Remote
📕 Paid Sabbaticals

12

REI

🌎 Remote
📕 Paid Sabbaticals 

See Also: 127 Biggest Companies Hiring Only Remote Workers

In our 2022 list, we used the following employee benefits to rank the best company for work-life balance: 

  • Four-day work week
  • Remote work
  • Asynchronous work
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Paid sabbaticals

See Also: What Is A Sabbatical Leave From Work? | Sabbatical Leave: Should Your Company Offer A Program? | How To Propose & Take A Sabbatical From Work

Want to see some deeper looks at the work-life balance at some massive companies? We’ve broken down these Fortune 100s: Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Fedex, Goldman Sachs.

See Also: How Many Work Hours & Days Are In A Month? [2023]

 

Want to nominate a great company for work-life balance?

Get in touch with Buildremote here. We’ll investigate that company’s work-life balance (and credit you for the tip, if you’d like).

We hope you find this article useful. Just so you know, Buildremote may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page to help keep this site running.

See Also: 122 Influential Work-Life Balance Quotes

 

Did you enjoy this article? Hover over the image below to pin it!

Pinterest Image - 22 Companies With The Best Work-Life Balance (2023)

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *