One of the biggest remote work advocates has done a complete 180 on its staff, with the CEO of Bolt announcing that the company is ditching its work-from-home policy.
Remote work has become one of the most popular employee perks and benefits in 2024, largely due to the fact that return-to-office policies have become so prevalent.
Now, one of the first companies to make remote work a staple of its core principles is forcing employees back in the office, which just goes to show how rare it has become in the modern era.
Bolt CEO Ends Remote Work
Bolt — the ride sharing company that has admirably competed with Uber over the years — is officially getting rid of its generous remote work policy, which allowed employees the flexibility to work from home whenever they wanted.
The decision comes from Bolt CEO Markus Villig, who had some pretty harsh words for remote work, focusing on how his team had been taking advantage of it over the course of its lifetime.
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“We are too scattered, people feel disconnected, attrition is too high, and our offices lie empty.” – Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt
Villig also noted that the company needed to “stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali,” in order to regain some of its company culture back.
“That is a vacation, not what we hired them to do.” – Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt
The new policy will go into effect on January 1, 2025, and all employees will have to be in the office at least two times per week and 12 times per month.
Is This RTO Policy Just Layoffs in Disguise?
Given the popularity of remote work, many have speculated that return-to-office policies have become an easy way to lay off employees without all the bad press. And while it’s hard to say if that’s the motivation behind the decision at Bolt, the language within the CEO’s statement certainly isn’t helping him beat those allegations.
“We are absolutely fine if some people decide this is not for them, as the cultural impact far outweighs it.” – Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt
Obviously, there is no way to confirm nor deny the reasoning behind this or any other RTO policy at major companies around the world. But it’s hard to deny the trend.
Bolt’s History with Remote Work
Return-to-office mandates are far from new in 2024. Companies around the world have been nixing the popular employee perk left and right, with substantial backlash from employees and productivity statisticians alike.
The reason it’s so surprising from Bolt is because the company has been a bastion of working from home for a long time now. In fact, the Bolt was able to quickly and efficiently move its employees to remote work during the pandemic, because it had already adopted a hybrid model prior to the lockdown.
All that to say, with return-to-office mandates becoming more and more common, it’s safe to say that no work from home position is safe, no matter how enthusiastic your company was about it before.
