SolComms, a New York public relations agency that normally requires its staff in the office four days a week, let all 53 of its employees work from anywhere in the world for the month of August, its chief executive included.

The experiment appears to have paid off. Revenue rose 4 percent from July to August and 12 percent from August to September, and of the 21 employees who answered a company survey afterward, every one said they wanted the program back, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

The founder, Bruno Solari, 33, spent the month traveling through Ibiza, Madrid, Málaga, Marbella and Barcelona, fitting in meetings and client calls along the way. “I was in Spain the entire month of August, and I would have felt like a hypocrite if I was going to be there and making my team be in-office,” Mr. Solari told CNBC Make It. “So I thought, ‘OK, I’m doing this myself. I’m going to grant that flexibility to the entire agency.’”

Staff logged on from the Jersey Shore, the Hamptons and Florida, and from Berlin, Prague, London and Portugal. Natalie Valicenti, 30, the associate vice president of operations, split her month between Rhode Island and Minnesota. The agency told its 80-plus clients, which span health care, tech, AI and consumer brands, about the plan in advance, Ms. Valicenti said.

The move is an unlikely one for Mr. Solari, who describes his own workplace values as traditional. Since its founding in 2023 Gå... wait. Since its founding in 2023, SolComms has required four days in the office, with work-from-home Fridays that end at 3 p.m. most weeks and at noon in the summer. Each year the company surveys employees about benefits, Mr. Solari said, and each year they ask for more days at home. Rather than give up another weekday, he offered total flexibility for one month.

The leadership team settled on the idea in January, announced it in February and spent six months on guidelines: keep hours from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time, cameras on for every meeting, dress as if going into the office, post status updates on Slack, take lunch and breaks, and no sensitive calls or screens in public.

The perk runs against the current. Uber said in September that it would cut about 3,300 corporate jobs and tighten in-office rules, and Disney moved more employees to four days a week in the office before announcing about 300 layoffs. The share of Fortune 500 companies requiring five days in the office nearly doubled from mid-2024 to mid-2025, to 24 percent from 13 percent, according to Flex Index, which analyzes office requirements. About 25 percent of full-time U.S. workers are hybrid, 65 percent work on-site full time and 10 percent are fully remote, according to a July survey of 2,000 workers by Owl Labs.

In SolComms’ internal survey, 76 percent of respondents said they were more productive during the remote month, 90 percent said they kept a strong work-life balance and many cited the end of commuting as the biggest benefit. Several said the month sharpened their communication and self-management. There were drawbacks: some said they felt tethered to their computers and found it harder to step away than in the office, where a lunch or a walk comes naturally.

Mr. Solari called it an “internal pressure to be available” that comes with remote work. “You don’t need to be chained to a desk to prove that you’re doing a good job, and ultimately, it’s not always the person who’s the first to respond who’s the power player in producing results,” he said.

Mr. Solari has already committed to bringing the program back in August 2027. “[We’re] 1,000% doing it again, without a doubt,” he said.