Elon's Ultimatum on Working from Home, and Why He is Wrong

Unless a compelling reason for working in the office can be communicated, all attempts at threatening or cajoling will fail miserably.

Elon Musk - Love him or hate him, he sure knows how to make the news

The Short of It

• Large companies have tried everything - From tracking card swipes (JP Morgan), to free concerts (Google), to pay cuts (Stephenson Harwood), to increase office attendance.

• The future way of working is NOT going back to how it used to be, no matter how much CEOs protest.

• Empathy is critical in understanding why employees prefer working remotely or having a hybrid working arrangement.

• The economics makes sense for employees. Recent survey from Cisco shows Australians saved $10,000 per year working remotely the last two years.

• Any success in encouraging working in the office depends on employers and managers selling a compelling story to its employees. A compelling reason has to relate specifically to the job the employee's been hired to do.

• Free barista coffee and ping pong tables ARE NOT compelling reasons.

The Long of It

Another day, another headline about Elon Musk. If he is not threatening to buy Twitter (and subsequently playing coy), he is threatening to vote Republican. This time though, he has waddled into something far more relevant to society at large – the rising trend of remote working.

Writing to his Tesla executives in an email earlier this week, he informed them they can no longer work from home, warning they must return to the office or leave the company. This created a media uproar and even led to a public feud between Elon Musk and the CEO of Atlassian, Scott Farquhar, where the latter fully supports working from home and offered any disgruntled Tesla employees to join Atlassian.

Tesla is not the only large organisation struggling to find the right balance in the whole debate on working from home vs office.

Back in mid 2021, JP Morgan had ordered its staff back into the office. But after a year of tracking swipe cards and other punitive measures, the bank finally accepted in its CEO, Jamie Dimon's annual letter to shareholders that “working from home will become more permanent in American business”.

Grammy winner Lizzo

Google, in an attempt to entice employees back into the office, hired Grammy award winning R&B artist Lizzo for a private event. That the performance was not fully embraced by Google’s employees, where some in the audiences were heard shouting “Propaganda!” during the concert, was not a surprised, but it does show the uphill battle for organisations trying to convince its people to return to the office.

Others, like Stephenson Harwood, a UK law firm, offered a 20% pay cut for employees to work remotely at least 99% of the time – that is, they still have to make it into the office at least once a month. How the law firm came up with 20% and once a month is anyone’s guess, but it certainly sounds more like a stab in the dark than a well-thought-out policy.

Not Everyone Wants to Work from Home. True…But….

This is about as clear as day. There are many who prefer to go back to the previous norms of working from the office. These could be young graduates who needs the in-person networking and coaching from their more experienced colleagues, or managers who finds it challenging to manage a team of people virtually, or employees who do not have the ideal space or working conditions at home.

The fact though is there are enough people who prefers at least a hybrid working arrangement for it to demand further attention from employers. These include employees who, through the pandemic-enforced working from home arrangement, now know that their job can be done remotely, with no loss of productivity.

In fact, some studies have even shown that productivity actually increased when employees work from home (which ironically, may have led to the trend of more people reporting burnouts, and an inability to switch off after working hours, while working from home).

Why Do People Want to Work from Home?

For some, it means more time at home with loved ones and less time commuting into the office. For others, the ability to work remotely means being able to afford a house further away from the city without shelling out a fortune on travelling to and from their workplace.

A recent global study by Cisco estimated that Australian’s saved an average of $10,000 a year as a result of being able to work from home.

Some even prefer the peace and quiet at home to be able to do deep productive work, something hard to attain with the distractions that comes with working in our open plan space offices that are standard in all companies these days.

Empathy is Important. And Don’t Project.

The key here is to understand that these reasons are unique to each team and as a manager you will need to emphasize with your team’s individual needs to be able to work flexibly.

We’ve found that many leaders are of the opinion that if they can commit to the office every day, despite their own busy schedules, then their employees should be able to do the same.

What many leaders fail to recognise is that managers and senior executives are usually at a stage in their careers where it is likely they have sufficient resources to help with the family, or earns enough to be a single income-earning family – something that is not common among those who are in the early parts of their career, or the growing migrant class in Australia.

Similarly, managers and senior executives usually have more autonomy and flexibility as part and parcel of their job status and hence, may not appreciate why having hybrid working arrangement may be so important to their team.

It is also very important to not project your own ineffectuality on your team. Just because you can’t work productively from home, it doesn’t mean that others can’t.

Avoid the example of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK, who has made numerous calls for workers to head back to the office, by using his experience of “eating too much cheese when he works from home” as a cautionary tale.

Boris Johnson in his trademark befuddled look

So, What Can Managers Do to Encourage Returning Work in the Office?

That is not the right question to ask, at least not initially.

The more urgent question is:

Why do you think it is critical that your team works in the office?

If you cannot give yourself a compelling answer, then we don’t think you’ll be able to Lizzo your way into getting your team on-board.

A compelling reason isn’t one that merely removes the challenges of commuting, like compensation for travelling. It isn't free barista coffee or weekly BBQ sessions or ping pong tables or grand office renovation. It certainly isn’t threats of pay cuts or being fired.

By the way, it also isn't necessary investing in fancy monitors just to encourage working from the office, as suggested by Samsung in the Australian Financial Review today.

Samsung sponsored article on AFR selling their brand new monitors

A COMPELLING REASON is one where your team sees tangible benefits in working in the office specifically in relation to the execution of their duties and responsibilities.

For example, you can plan so that when your team is in the office, they focus solely on completing group tasks that reaps the most benefit from in-person team collaboration, instead of individual tasks that isn’t impacted by the location of the employee.

If it is your position as the employer that your team is more productive in the office rather than WFH, maybe consider putting your money where your mouth is and allow your employees to leave an hour earlier when they work in the office (which might help with commuting given they would then skip the rush hour traffic).

Having clear objectives on accomplishing team-oriented tasks as well as an incentive to finish the working day earlier may also encourage teams to be more disciplined and avoid distractions while in the office. Limiting distractions such as unnecessary and meaningless meetings or catch ups can help further avoid employees feeling as if they are wasting more time in the office than at home.

Finally, this should not be a story that you author on your own. Instead, it should be a collective bottom up effort with your team to work out what's the best way to move forward. Listen to them, and then act.

Can You Afford Not to Change Anything?

Well, it depends. If you are Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, and you have tonnes of resources, you are welcomed to take a bet against the determined forward march of remote working. For mere mortals like the rest of us, it would be advisable to accept that COVID-19 did not birth this trend of hybrid working. It merely accelerated its progress.

After two years of deftly convincing your employees that they are still able to give their 110% to the company despite working remotely while surviving through a global pandemic, it will take more than just a one-off Lizzo concert to compellingly change that narrative.

Leaders need to be more creative and emphatic and work in concert with their teams to devise the best way forward beyond free barista coffees.