Elon Musk's 'antiquated' views on working from home threatens to rob Tesla of top talent, experts say

Elon Musk recently told Tesla employees that they must work at least 40 hours a week in the office. However, experts say the world's richest man is wrong to say that logging in from home during the pandemic tricked people into thinking they didn't need to work hard. Nick Gallimore director of innovation at Advanced People Management told Insider that Musk would need something of a miracle if he expects people to stay with him...not to mention be more productive. Musks comments that telecommuting simply cannot be as efficient or productive as working from a physical location places him in the small minority of business owners who bet their organization's future on organizational design principles of the past he said.

The odds are stacked against you with a lot of different research suggesting that only 10% of people actually want to work from the office full time added Gallimore who advises on human resource issues. Insider reached out to Musk for comment via Tesla. Pew Research Center the independent US think tank on social issues has found that people who keep working from home do so because they want to not because they have to. If Musk eventually takes control of Twitter his demands could disrupt the company's remote work arrangements. Nicole Penn president of an advertising and marketing agency called EGC Group told Insider Every employee has an environment that increases or decreases their productivity. If Tesla's culture is based on collaboration and ideas that originated in the factory it will not be possible for a remote team member to communicate efficiently.

Ben believes that the inflexibility of working in the office full time is old-fashioned and the exclusion of any telecommuting or hybrid workers excludes potential high-performing candidates. You have to wonder if Elon will retain the best talent who need and appreciate more flexibility he added. After making a $44 billion bid to buy Twitter it appears he is on the verge of abandoning the deal due to his refusal to prove the number of fake accounts. In 2020 Twitter was one of the first major tech companies to introduce a forever work from home policy. Recently Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that employees can also work from home forever. Australian software billionaire Scott Farquhar described Musk's decision as something from the 1950s and said his employees have the option to work from wherever they want to call it a team anywhere. Musk's vision of productivity and requiring Tesla employees to work at least set hours in the office was not well received by many he called it old-fashioned. Musk believes that there is no secret to business success work and hard work.

But Musk isn't the only one who thinks office work is best. I continue to believe that an amazing culture is built by working together in an office said Joe Camperato CEO of National Business Capital which provides loans to small businesses regardless of industry. I agree with his statement because his job is to build cars in a factory and I don't really understand how you can do that remotely more effectively Camperato added. In his initial email Musk said it's important to see senior managers around the office. That was one of the reasons he lived at the Tesla plant in Fremont California when the company struggled to ramp up production in 2017 and 2018. Had he not Tesla would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. Of course, some companies don't order it but when was the last time you shipped a great new product? It's been a long time since Musk wrote.