👎 A CEO's masterclass in how NOT to inspire employees

Good Morning,

After last week, I’m convinced some CEOs will want employees in the office just so their humiliating speeches can’t be recorded on Zoom and leaked to the public.

The MillerKnoll CEO made waves for telling employees not to focus on whether they’ll get bonuses they were expecting, and instead to “leave pity city” and focus on bridging the company’s financial shortfall. It was viewed as an insensitive, demeaning speech - even more so when it was revealed she made millions in non-salary compensation in 2022 alone.

But incredibly, she was one-upped…

Need to know

In a week of CEOs going viral for the wrong reasons, James Clarke at Clearlink managed to stand out by giving the worst return-to-office announcement we’ve seen so far, first reported by Maxwell Strachan in this Vice article.

To set the stage, Clarke made an announcement to his 1,000+ employees in October that “there are no plans to require anyone to work in the new Draper office or the St. Pete office.” The company, like many, had adopted a remote and hybrid policy as a result of the pandemic. Hearing this prompted many employees to make lifestyle or location changes, as one could expect.

But then on April 3rd, he reversed course, mandating that employees within 50 miles of the Draper headquarters office return to the office 4 days a week.

Here are a few highlights from his video speech:

• He praised a company leader who had to sell their family dog in order to come back to the office regularly.

• He apparently received data that 30 remote employees had not opened their laptops once for a full month. Buddy, if your company goes a full month without realizing that, you have a separate, bigger problem.

• In an odd rant about how he’s been criticized for his faith and been a victim of verbal assaults by employees, he called himself an “alum” of Harvard, though he didn’t share that his Harvard experience was a 9-week executive program (must not have worked).

• He questioned whether caregiving parents could work effectively, saying “only the rarest of full-time caregivers can also be productive and full-time employees at the same time.”

The statement that stuck with me the most was near the beginning, when he addressed those with him in the room, saying “you’ve all sacrificed greatly to be here … to be away from your family.”

What if you didn’t have to “sacrifice greatly” just to keep a job?

With remote work, you don’t have to.

You can get your job done while raising your kids, managing a household, visiting friends and family, or, dare I say it: keeping your family dog.

The statements above are all red flags to hear from leaders, and I know some of you are dealing with similar circumstances, or know someone who is.

So here’s a friendly reminder that we created this remote job board to help more people find remote jobs, so they can work in a way that allows them to live the life they want.

Elsewhere

• This home office detaches via train tracks - yes, you read that correctly and it’s awesome (New York Times)

• Autodesk doubled-down on remote work; productivity skyrocketed (Fortune)

  • PS: they have 122 openings on our job board

• The key to finding and hiring great remote workers (Forbes)

• This job hunter was tricked into applying to non-remote jobs (Daily Dot)

• Four pro tips for adopting async work (Quartz)

Leaving you with an excerpt from this bold piece on remote work by Aki Ito at Insider, featuring Joan Williams. Together they discuss office culture’s sexist history, and the role remote work can play in creating a more equal, and successful, workforce:

Cheers,
Grant