Investor and “Shark Tank” TV personality Kevin O’Leary This sends a message to companies that still cling to the idea of mandatory office work: You are scaring away your best employees.
“The cubicle is dead,” O’Leary said in a recent article on
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In a video he posted, the entrepreneur and investor behind more than 50 portfolio companies explains the durability of this shift. “We thought 15% wouldn’t come back. The actual number now is 40%,” he said, referring to his business. “I think that’s true for the entire economy.”
Cubicles are dead.
The top programmers, accountants, and operators left and weren’t coming back.If you force people to go back to the office
You only hire the last quarter of people.I want my competitors to hire these people, not me. pic.twitter.com/E1NY1sWKwa
Accounting, compliance and logistics roles in particular have been moved offsite, O’Leary said. Workers in these positions move for better housing, lower costs and more space, and they don’t come back for a cubicle. Best programmer? Same story. “They work the way they want, get paid well, and deliver on time or not,” he said.
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His views are consistent with broader data. According to last year’s Owl Labs report on the state of hybrid work, 69% of managers believe hybrid or remote work actually makes their teams more productive. Meanwhile, 40% of workers said they would start looking for work if flexible working was removed.
The report also found that most hybrid workers now go to the office three to four days a week, but this is not their preference. 32% prefer to stay in the office for three days, 14% prefer to stay for four days and only 6% prefer to stay for five days. For 12% of hybrid workers, not being in the office is the top choice.
An Owl Labs survey found that fully 80% of employees are already using or experimenting with artificial intelligence to improve productivity. This can be tracked through tools like Rad AI, an emerging platform that helps companies use artificial intelligence to create smarter, faster content. As more and more teams work asynchronously, platforms like this become increasingly important.
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O’Leary believes companies that insist on working in offices are choosing the wrong traits. “You’ll never get [top workers] “Come back,” he said, “if you try to say to people, ‘Oh, you have to work in an office,’ and that’s what you want to hire, you’re just going to get the bottom quartile of people who don’t have a choice.”
Workers now expect flexibility by default. Many are even willing to take pay cuts to maintain the status quo.
For employers who still want to turn back the clock to 2019, O’Leary has one final wish: “I want my competitors to hire these people, not me.”
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Kevin O’Leary says this article “The cubicle is dead”. Top talent doesn’t come back when they leave. The post Mandatory RTO means “You’ll only hire the bottom quartile” originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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