New Twitter CEO Elon Musk is reportedly planning to force all of his remaining employees back into the office, just under a week after officially acquiring the company.
The move, reported by Axios (opens in a new tab), comes as the social media giant could also consider laying off a third of its workforce, a move that could affect up to 3700 of its employees.
The decision to force workers back into the office stands in stark contrast to some of the previous actions taken by Twitter; In May 2020, the company told its employees that they would "never" have to go back to the office if they wanted to.
What is the motivation?
Musk has already repeatedly expressed his distaste for remote work at his companies.
In June 2020, an internal memo to Tesla staff urged employees to return to the office for a 40-hour work week, or "pretend to work somewhere else," even though the world was in the midst of the pandemic. at that moment.
Musk's acquisition has already sparked significant changes at Twitter.
Many members of the company's management team have already been sacked, including its managing director Parag Agrawal and its legal director Vijaya Gadde.
Plans to end remote work may well be linked to ambitious plans to overhaul the company's business model.
Company engineers were ordered to rebuild the company's "blue tick" verification system at short notice.
The project would see the website's €4.99 per month premium service replaced by an €8 per month program that would also include identity verification, as well as features such as reduced advertising exposure.
The news comes as workers continue to favor jobs that allow remote work.
A global survey conducted by Linkedin (opens in a new tab) found that flexibility was the third most important priority for all job seekers, after compensation and balance.