Ritik Gupta
Tech CEOs are stacking online following the WeWork chief exec’s statement that only the “least engaged” employees want to keep working from home.
During The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival on Wednesday, Sandeep Mathrani, who took the helm of WeWork in 2020, talked over the future of the office, saying that he sees employees who want to work at the office a few days every week and work remotely on other days.
But he added that the number of days workers want to stay at home is directly associated with how involved they are with their work.
“It’s also pretty obvious that those who are overly engaged with the company want to go to the office two-thirds of the time at least. Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home,” Mathrani said.
Since the interview, Mathrani’s fellow CEOs haven’t stammered to bring up that he has a bestowed interest in employees returning to the office as the CEO of a commercial real estate company.
Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud content management firm Box, brought up the imbecility of viewing your most active employees as those who use your product the most.
The most engaged employees always store their files in Box. https://t.co/eZD6LS60tU
— Aaron Levie (@levie) May 13, 2021
The most engaged employees always take @Uber to work and order @UberEats so they can skip those pesky long lunches. https://t.co/TDwgWCtoQ4
— dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) May 13, 2021
As a coworking startup, WeWork relies on people returning to the office to boost its business. Though the company’s current occupancy rate is below 50%, WeWork recently told investors it expects occupancy to soar to 75% by the fourth quarter of this year.
Marcelo Claure – WeWork’s executive chairman and the CEO of WeWork’s largest financial backer, SoftBank Group International – told Insider in a statement earlier this year that
“WeWork is incredibly well positioned to springboard into a future” thanks to its technology and “a new appreciation of the value of flexible workspace.”
