GM Scales Back Return-to-Office Plan After Staff Backlash

Ed Ludlow and David Welch, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. walked back plans to require employees to return to a company office several days a week, delaying a change to its remote-work policies until next year, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg.

The update, sent to salaried staff on Tuesday, clarified a directive issued on Sept. 23 that would have mandated spending three days on GM’s campus each week, starting later this year. While the automaker is still seeking “a more regular, in-person presence,” GM retreated from its return-to-office stance after pushback from employees.

“We acknowledge that the timing of the message, late on a Friday afternoon, was unfortunate,” according to the memo signed by Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra and other members of her senior management team.

Instead, GM will spend the next several weeks developing a plan based in part on employee feedback and pledged not to implement any changes in work-from-home policies until the first quarter of 2023, the memo said.

GM is the latest member of Corporate America to grapple with remote-work policy as pandemic-era measures are reconsidered. A number of US firms, including Big Tech titans such as Apple Inc. and Wall Street banks like Jefferies Financial Group Inc., are nudging employees to return several days a week.

“As we move to a more regular in-person work cycle, our plan is to collaboratively design the solution that best balances the needs of the enterprise with the needs of employees,” a GM spokesperson said.

Many GM employees had complained on internal message boards after the sudden shift away from a work-from-home status quo. In reaction to that pushback, GM is recalibrating its policy and may not adopt a one-size-fits-all approach requiring a standard set of days for a return to office work, said two people familiar with the matter.

News of GM’s policy about-face was reported earlier by the Detroit Free Press.