I was surprised to discover only recently that the US Patent and Trademark Office is indeed a paragon of remote working, with a 20-year history of pioneering work in distributed organization optimization.
Twenty years after the inception of the original remote work pilot, the USPTO has 88% of its workforce working remotely one to five days a week. Remote working has become a proven success at the USPTO, enhancing the agency's ability to attract and compete for talent." —Andrei Iancu, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property & Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office
Post COVID-19, companies of every size and stripe are going to be looking to reinvent how they work. The presence of the USPTO (a government agency) on a list of organizations that are succeeding in a significantly distributed manner should be very encouraging to all types of other organizations who may be considering a permanent shift to a more distributed version of themselves.
In a 2018 report, the USPTO revealed it had 11,093 people working remotely at least one day per week, an extraordinary 88% of all personnel. And more than 50% are 4-5 days per week
Reasons Why Remote Working Is Important To The USPTO
Remote work drives the USPTO's success across four critical areas: cost reduction, talent management, operational efficiency, and employee satisfaction. Here's how:
- Cost reduction: Significantly reduces the need for additional office space
- Talent advantage: Enhances recruitment and retention capabilities
- Operational efficiency: Fosters greater efficiency in production and management
- Work flexibility: Provides expanded work flexibility opportunities
The USPTO Was Ready For COVID-19
For most organizations, COVID-19's work-from-home mandate created chaos. Not the USPTO. They'd been planning for exactly this scenario for decades.
Long before anyone imagined a pandemic disrupting work patterns, the USPTO was building crisis contingency plans. Their distributed model wasn't an accident—it was strategic preparation for continuity of patent and trademark services.
"Our remote work program has also enhanced the USPTO's resiliency during continuity events, such as weather related closures, because many of our employees can continue to work through them."
The Cost Savings Are Significant
The National Academy of Public Administration found remote working saved the USPTO an average of $7 million per year based on work conducted continuity interruptions. Work they were able to do because they could work as a distributed organization.
Other Organizational Benefits
Here's what's remarkable about the USPTO's distributed workforce: they've built elasticity into the system. Large portions of the organization can go fully remote without any productivity loss.
The proof? During a January 2018 continuity event, over 10,000 of the approximate 12,500 USPTO employees worked remotely. Productivity didn't just maintain—it increased:
- Trademark examining attorneys: Performed more than 105% of the work they did on recent comparable office days
- Patent examiners: Accomplished an average of 108.5% of the work they did on recent comparable office days
Want to scale without the overhead? The USPTO shows how it's done. They've increased personnel dramatically while maintaining a small real estate footprint—avoiding 95% of non-compensation costs.
This isn't just cost cutting. The agency met all production, quality, and e-government goals while preserving their excellent customer experience.
Another oft-cited benefit of being a distributed organization is you can lower your total employment costs, for being able to tap great talent at better salary rates from a wider geographic area. The USPTO shared some numbers that prove these benefits are real. Under a pilot program called TEAPP, the agency was able to open up hiring of patent attorneys (a big chunk of total payroll) to a larger geographic area. Because of the difference in local pay, the USPTO was able to avoid over $500K in compensation costs in 2018. Since TEAPP's inception, the agency has saved over $2 million dollars in salary reductions. These savings were made possible because these patent attorney positions were designed to be 100% remote from the start.
Why The USPTO Embraces Working As A Distributed Organization
Remote working improves employee satisfaction by providing opportunities for expanded work flexibility, decreasing the costs and stress of commuting, and improving work-life balance.
Importantly, remote working also enhances the resiliency of the USPTO by allowing the majority of employees the ability to work during any event that threatens the continuity of operations.
The USPTO has a lovely "Why choose us" page, where you can learn more about how they work.
Current Challenges To USPTO's Remote Work Program
While the USPTO's remote work program has been a long-standing success, it's not immune to shifting federal workplace policies. Recent discussions across government agencies have brought renewed focus on requirements for increased in-office presence. Sound familiar? Even the most established remote programs face pressure to justify their distributed models.
Here's the thing: these policy shifts create uncertainty about the future of the very flexibility that made the USPTO a model for distributed work. The agency that proved remote work could enhance productivity and save millions now finds itself navigating new federal guidelines that may challenge its pioneering approach.
For organizations watching these developments, the lesson is clear—even successful remote programs require ongoing advocacy and adaptation. The challenge isn't whether distributed work delivers results (the USPTO proved that definitively), but how to preserve those benefits in changing regulatory environments.
Technology Infrastructure That Enables Remote Work Success
As a government agency, you'd be right to expect that the USPTO can't take advantage of the cool distributed company tools, like Slack and Notion. But, like all good distributed organizations, they take care to make sure what they have works for the purpose of facilitating a distributed team. That their IT team has this mandate is incredible. Imagine if more IT teams had had a mandate to make remote working "work" before Coronavirus.
Using a wide suite of hardware and software the distributed team at the USPTO are able to remain seamlessly connected to each other, their managers, and their overall work environment, regardless of where they are physically located. This suite includes the Universal Laptop, Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, the Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Microsoft Lync, webcam, Cisco WebEx, and small office/home office (SOHO) router. They also have an intranet that is dedicated to supporting the distributed team in ways not unlike those of Gitlab and Automattic.
Environmental Impact Of USPTO's Remote Work Program
Beyond operational efficiency, the USPTO's remote work program delivers measurable environmental benefits. Let's be honest—most organizations talk about sustainability, but distributed work creates real impact.
6,324 workers working remotely four or five days per week: • Avoid driving 70 million miles in a year • Collectively save $5.5 million in gas a year
• Collectively reduce emissions by 37 thousand tons a year
These aren't theoretical projections—they're actual results from employees who no longer commute to headquarters. For organizations with sustainability commitments, remote work isn't just about talent access or cost savings. It's a concrete way to reduce your carbon footprint while improving employee satisfaction.
Lessons From USPTO's Remote Work Success
The USPTO's two-decade journey offers a blueprint for distributed work success. They've proven that remote work transforms from crisis response to competitive advantage with the right approach.
Key takeaways from their success:
- Strategic planning: Plan for continuity scenarios before you need them
- Technology investment: Build infrastructure that actually supports distributed teams
- Productivity focus: Measure outcomes, not hours in the office
- Cost benefits: $7 million annual savings while improving performance
What's remarkable? A traditional government agency successfully reinvented how work gets done, challenging every assumption about where innovation happens.
For companies inspired by this model, you don't need 20 years to build a successful global team. The infrastructure, compliance frameworks, and proven practices already exist. Whether you're expanding internationally or simply want to access talent beyond your headquarters, you can replicate USPTO's success without the complexity of building it from scratch. Ready to build your own resilient, distributed workforce? Start hiring globally with the confidence that comes from learning from the best.
About Oyster
Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.
Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.
