Back to work, says the world’s richest man.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is warning all executives at the electric car company that they risk being fired if they don’t show up at the office for at least 40 hours per week.
“In a leaked email sent to workers with the miss-spelt subject line ‘remote work is no longer acceptble’, Musk wrote that any executive staff who wish to work remotely must be in the office for a minimum of 40 hours per week ‘or depart Tesla,'” the Daily Mail reported. “He added that the requirement for executive staff to work at least 40 hours in the office is ‘less than we ask of factory workers.'”
“If there are particularly exceptional contributors for whom this is impossible, I will review and approve those exceptions directly,” he wrote, adding that the workplace “must be a main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties, for example being responsible for Fremont factory human relations, but having your office in another state.”
Replying to someone who questioned the edict on Twitter, Musk wrote: “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”
They should pretend to work somewhere else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022
But Musk is in the small minority, according to Forbes.
“A new survey of human resources leaders from the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research group, finds that just 4% said they are requiring all employees to return to the workplace full-time. And less than half (45%) said they were requiring some workers to return to the office five days a week,” the magazine wrote in early May.
“We were all pretty shocked,” Robin Erickson, vice president of human capital at the Conference Board, told Forbes. “We were surprised given what we’re hearing about how many employers are requiring workers to come back full time.”
The survey found that some 90% of employers “are allowing hybrid work schedules, whether that means the occasional office visit that workers decide on their own or a more prescribed schedule of one to four days in the workplace.”
Another survey found hardly anyone is returning to the office in New York City.
“More than two years after the outbreak of coronavirus, only 8% of Manhattan office employees are back in the office five days a week, according to new data from The Partnership for New York,” the New York Post reported last month. “Meanwhile, 38% of Manhattan office employees are coming into the office part-time under hybrid work schedules and anticipate that by Labor Day they can bring that number to 49%, according to the survey.”
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.