Elon Musk has stated that all of his employees must come back on-site at least 40 hours a week or leave the company.
After months of the pandemic, some jobs discovered that they could perform very well, working remotely, while enjoying significant benefits,
such as:
- No longer having to spend hours in transit to get to work
- Being able to spend more quality time with family
- Less pollution
- Going to the essential...
The question is not so much to know if we are more efficient in person or remotely, but rather if we can leave such a decision to the discretion of employees alone?
Can we still think in 2022, that a top-down management model can make sense? It is the responsibility of a leader to indicate the target to reach, but on the contrary, it is not his responsibility to tell his employees how to reach this target.
The question is not whether people should work remotely or on-site. The question is: who decides? And the answer reveals the true power structure of the organization. When management decides unilaterally, it signals that employees are not trusted, that their autonomy does not matter, that the organization does not see them as whole human beings with lives outside of work.
But when the decision is made collectively, something shifts. People feel seen. They feel respected. They feel like they matter. And paradoxically, this is when they work best. Not because they are monitored, not because they are in the office, but because they feel valued. Because their voice counts. Because they have a say in the decisions that affect their lives.
The best organizations of the future will not mandate anything. They will trust their people to make wise decisions about how they work best. They will provide the tools, the structure, the support—and then get out of the way. This is not a policy change. This is a consciousness shift. It is about moving from a paradigm of control to a paradigm of trust. And that transformation begins with a simple question: who decides?