CEOs: Be Willing To Break A Few Eggs
The Wall Street Journal has published at least two articles this week about Return To Office (RTO) policies and how employees are coping with and gaming them. The fact that this is even an issue makes me sick to my stomach.
If you are a company such as Automattic (the platform that TEK2day is published on) and all 1,947 employees work from home and that’s how it’s been since the company was founded more than 20 years ago in 2002, I would not change a thing. My former shop was largely remote and we got stuff done at a best-in-class 40% EBITDA margin and were the leading insurtech company in the world. My former investment bank had a similar get-it-done, minimal waste, drive-the-business culture.
However, if your corporate culture is such that prior to COVID most if not all of your employees showed up to the office every day for a full day, yet now few employees do so, the problem lies with the CEO. I would describe a CEO who tolerates this lack of work ethic as weak. Spare me the bullshit about it being a competitive landscape and if I don’t cave to my engineers they will leave for Google or Microsoft or ChatGPT. Let them walk! My advice to today’s CEOs who have cowered to employees for 3 years is to grow a pair. Hold everyone to the same standard – yourself, your executive team and the rest of your employee base. Treat everyone equally, hold everyone accountable and to the highest standard. I can all but guarantee that your company’s output and operating efficiency will greatly improve, even if you break a few eggs in the process.
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