How not to manage staff – Lessons from Elon Musk

Elon Musk has told Twitter staff that they must commit to working “long hours at high intensity” or else leave the company, according to reports. And that is after Mr. Musk already sacked half of Twitter’s employees – only to hire some of them a couple of days later after finding out that some of them were crucial to the future development of the platform. And when you fire your staff by the thousands, it is quite impractical to have a chat with every single one of them, so everyone just had to anxiously wait to find out whether they were sent their dismissal by email (it seems that some people found out even before they received the email by finding that the access to their systems had been revoked). But not only the number of employees has been drastically reduced, Musk on 13 December also liquidated Twitter’s ‘Trust and Safety Council’, a group consisting of members of human rights and youth protection organisations whose role it was to advise the platform on the further development of products and rules.

In most developed economies and industries there are currently two job openings for every unemployed worker. Baby boomers reach now retirement age (so will I in a few years) and as a consequence employers are desperately looking for experienced staff. In this context Mr. Musk’s attitude to employees is surprising to say the least and as a consequence he also fits all the criteria, at least in accordance with an article published in Forbes magazine in 2014, of a bad boss.

AT Kearney, a consultancy, in 2018 conducted a survey that explored the degree of joy employees experience at work (yes, you may not believe it, but it is actually possible to enjoy work) and the results were quite interesting, confirming that joy stems from believing one’s work is truly meaningful. Almost 90% of respondents stated that they were expecting to experience a meaningful degree of joy at work, yet only 37% reported that they were actually experiencing such satisfaction, leaving a ‘joy gap’ of 53%.

The survey highlights what really makes employees happy at work: Understanding and then feeling committed to achieving the company’s vision and strategy as well as believing that the business makes a positive contribution to society were the principal drivers. And that isn’t really surprising, as a vegan will probably struggle working for a butcher and an environmentalist may find it challenging working for an oil producer, whereas whether Twitter makes a positive contribution to society remains debatable.

The next drivers in the AT Kearney survey are somewhat more personal: People want to work for businesses where successes are celebrated with in the team, where they feel a strong bond within the team and where their talents are being used effectively. Making threats to your personnel such as Elon Musk did mid-November when he set the ultimatum to buckle-up or leave the company clearly doesn’t pass that test. According to news reports hundreds of staffers did indeed not accept the challenge and hence found themselves made automatically redundant with three months severance pay. The departures highlight the reluctance of some of Twitter’s 3’000 or so remaining employees to stay with a company where Musk earlier fired half of the workforce including top management and is ruthlessly changing the culture to emphasize long hours and an intense pace.

The heat is on at Tesla as well: A leaked email which Musk had sent in the spring to his executives states that “anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean minimum) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers,” adding that the office must be the employee’s primary workplace where the other workers they regularly interact with are based — “not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties.” Musk further said he would personally review any request for exemption from the policy, but that for the most part, “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”

It is common sense that happy workers are productive workers, and a positive atmosphere in the workplace makes for more enthusiastic and customer oriented colleagues. Fair enough, most users of Twitter will never need or want to interact with a human being at the company, but some may wonder whether they want to use a social media platform provided by a man who treats his employees in such a manner.

Mr. Musk in the meantime has converted empty offices and conference rooms at its San Francisco headquarter into rest areas – complete with mattresses and bedside tables in an effort to help “tired employees” at the company. Some may indeed be tired in the literal meaning of the word, some more may equally be tired of their big boss.