An opinion piece in the Washington Post written by Cathy Merrill, CEO of the Washingtonian, an online and monthly publication focusing on the Washington, D.C. metro area, managed to offend her staff and create a viral whirlwind of anger on Twitter.
The aggressive tone of the title of the piece—“Opinion: As a CEO, I want my employees to understand the risks of not returning to work in the office”—was later changed and softened. Merrill wrote, “While some employees might like to continue to work from home and pop in only when necessary, that presents executives with a tempting economic option the employees might not like.” She ominously warned that “if the employee is rarely around” the office then there is a “strong incentive to change their status to ‘contractor.’”
The publisher seemed to make a not-so-subtle threat that if her staff didn’t return to the office, they’d run the risk of being demoted and possibly lose their full-time, permanent employment status. “Instead of receiving a set salary, contractors are paid only for the work they do, either hourly or by appropriate output metrics,” wrote Merrill.
A contract workforce would be better financially for the magazine. Merrill pointed out that by switching the status from “employee” to “contractor” it would result in Merrill not having to pay for “healthcare, a 401(k) match and our share of FICA and Medicare taxes” and these costly benefits “add up roughly to an extra 15% of compensation. Not to mention the potential savings of reduced office space and extras, such as bonuses and parking fees.”
In response, the magazine’s staff refused to write content for the day and shared their unified dismay on Twitter.
Merrill, similar to thousands of other business executives, is trying to figure out the best way to navigate the economy reopening and bringing people back to the office. The current trend looks like a majority of corporations will offer a flexible hybrid work model. This would include a combination of some people working in the office two or three days a week and others exclusively at home. This is a stressful and difficult decision for both management and staff alike.
For executives, they’ll need to create plans and policies to ensure the health and safety of workers in the office, oversee a staff that is dispersed and take the extra time and efforts to make sure that the remote workers don’t fall off the radar and are not forgotten.
We have seen Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and other online companies do exceedingly well during the pandemic. However, thousands of small and midsize businesses had a rough time. There have been a large number of bankruptcies and permanent closures.
It’s understandable that a CEO of a relatively small publication that goes up against the likes of billionaire-backed Jeff Bezos’ the Washington Post and other deep-pocketed media companies would be concerned about the financial situation of her publication.
It’s clear from her piece that Merrill is a proponent of workers returning to the office. That is an understandably acceptable approach. There are a lot of positive reasons for having everyone together in an office setting, including making it easier to manage compared to hybrid models, onboarding new hires, mentoring young employees, the serendipitous meetings that take place in the office, the ease of connecting with people throughout the day and keeping alive a corporate culture.
The CEOs of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, two top investment banks, publicly shared their positive views on employees getting back to the office. David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, called working from home an “aberration” and not suited for his bank, which relies upon constant sharing and communicating knowledge between bankers, brokers and traders.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, said, “Most professionals learn their job through an apprenticeship model, which is almost impossible to replicate in the Zoom world.” He added that with remote work, there is an absence of “spontaneous learning and creativity because you don’t run into people at the coffee machine, talk with clients in unplanned scenarios or travel to meet with customers and employees for feedback on your products and services.”
While the tone of her piece came across aggressive, it’s possible that there is an underlying concern over how the business will fare in the new post-pandemic environment. The last year had to be hard. The Washington, D.C. region receives throngs of visitors and tourists. It’s also a vibrant working city. They have wonderful restaurants, concerts, museums and historical monuments. As the city shut down, advertising revenues from these and other sources may have plummeted. It’s no secret that some media companies have had to layoff workers and cut costs.
The op-ed piece may have been a way of testing the waters for pivoting to a contract-based workforce. Major corporations, such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and a host of other app-based companies, have built solid businesses on this model.
Even if this was her goal, the message failed miserably and the article turned into a case study of tone-deafness. Merrill and her staff should have held a private conversation to discuss how things will look moving forward. Instead, the one-sided edict made in public made everyone take a side.
The workers immediately became distrustful and hurt. If Merrill simply called everyone into the office for an afternoon or held a video conference call to go over all of the options, even if some may not have been too pleasant, there would have been a chance of working things out amicably.
This is a cautionary tale for senior executives. Don’t air your dirty laundry in public. Although the job market is heating up, it’s far from perfect, with about 8 million fewer jobs now compared to pre-pandemic levels. We are still feeling raw and afraid after seeing all of the Covid-19 cases and deaths. When people are on edge, it’s hard to hold a calm, rationale conversation. It’s even tougher when you try to do this publicly. It only leads to distrust and anger.
It doesn’t help matters when Merrill uses awkward and uncomfortable language, such as, “I am concerned about the unfortunately ‘common office worker’ who wants to continue working at home and just go into the office on occasion.” This type of comment feels derogatory and demeaning to workers, and certainly doesn’t help build bridges between the CEO and her team.
The CEO also wrote, “Anecdotally, I’ve heard from many CEOs that their older, more senior employees—working from comfortable homes and happy to be relieved of commuting—are more reluctant to go back to the office than their younger colleagues, many of whom have been working from small apartments or their parents’ homes.” The undercurrent message feels like the “older” and “more senior” employees at the Washingtonian are too complacent and not motivated to get out of the house, which has an ageist vibe to it. Experienced workers have had a hard time during the pandemic, and many were forced out of the job market, as they couldn’t get interviews or job offers. Not to mention, older people are more vulnerable to Covid-19.
Her piece included, “Commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield reported last year that 70% of Millennial and Generation-X workers ‘struggle more’ with the challenges of working from home.” Of course, a real-estate giant would call for people going into the office—if not, its business would suffer. As “older” workers were targeted by Merrill, why was it necessary to say that Millennials and Gen-X workers “struggle more?” These groups grew up with emerging technologies and are perfectly capable of navigating Zoom calls and Slack.
Think how hard it will be for the workers to have faith in the company and its management moving forward. There will be a lingering fear that they may ultimately have their roles reduced or lost.
In a smart and empathetic move after the Twitter storm, Merrill publicly apologized saying, “I have assured our team that there will be no changes to benefits or employee status” The CEO continued, “I am sorry if the op-ed made it appear like anything else.” In a memo to her staff about the matter, Merrill wrote, “I understand that some of you have read it as threatening, or as an indication that I’m anything less than ecstatically appreciative of the work and sacrifice of our team in 2020.”
She added, “As I have expressed many times, in a year that was especially difficult for me personally, I could not be happier or prouder or have more gratitude in my heart for all of you. I’m so sorry that the op-ed made it look like anything else.”
The remote option, she said, won’t be available in the future, but offered “just as we’ve been a flexible office since long before Covid-19, we will make accommodations for staff who need them for as long as the pandemic lasts.” Merrill also curiously wrote in what could be perceived as foreshadowing, “Remember something every manager knows: The hardest people to let go are the ones you know.”
Source: Forbes
