(Bloomberg) -- 3M Co.’s new chief is recalling managers to the office, dialing back a remote-friendly policy that his predecessor had hailed as being “rooted in flexibility and trust.”
The industrial giant, which has 85,000 employees globally, will expect — but not require — those at the director level and above to come into an office Tuesday through Thursday, which the company has deemed “collaboration days,” a 3M spokesperson confirmed. For those below the director rank, the new policy is voluntary.
The new rules start next month at 3M’s Minnesota headquarters for employees who live within 50 miles of the office, and will expand globally over time in line with local labor laws, the spokesperson said.
For the past three years, desk-based workers at the 122-year-old company had the freedom to work remotely for the most part in consultation with their managers, under a policy dubbed “Work Your Way.”
Employees at 3M will now be asked to work the way Bill Brown, who took the reins in May after a turbulent period of sluggish growth and legal setbacks, prefers. Brown has said that his biggest priority is “reinvigorating the 3M innovation machine.” Leaders at other companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Nike Inc. have claimed — often without evidence — that working from home can hinder the development of new products. Amazon is forcing most employees back five days a week in January, while Dell Technologies recently started requiring the same of its salespeople.
Recent research has found that return-to-office pushes, which often follow poor results, typically come from older male leaders and can lead to increased attrition of experienced personnel. Older companies like 3M are more likely to require office-based work, according to an index of workplace policies from Scoop Technologies, which found that more than nine in 10 companies launched in the past 15 years offered workers location flexibility, while just 65% of firms founded before 1980 did.
In a July call with investors, Brown said that revenue from new products had steadily declined over the past decade as 3M shifted spending and focus to other needs, such as exiting its “forever chemicals” business and revamping its supply chain. Brown outlined plans to lower costs by cutting waste and speeding 3M’s pace of new product development to grow sales.
Brian Elliott, who advises companies on their flex-work policies, said three days in the office can work “relatively well” for some companies, while leaving workers entirely to their own discretion in where they work can lead to confusion.
“But the answer to resolving that isn’t for the CEO to make a singular decision that doesn’t fit the needs of a broad range of business units and functions,” Elliott said.
Under 3M’s current flex-work policy, about 75% of non-manufacturing workers had chosen some type of hybrid or fully remote arrangement, an executive who has since departed 3M said in a 2023 interview. That model, rolled out in mid-2021 under former Chief Executive Officer Mike Roman, called for employees to sit down with managers and determine how often they should be onsite or remote. Managers had the discretion to bring teams in from time to time for what the company called “moments that matter,” when in-person collaboration was deemed essential.
Not all of 3M’s workers got to work their way, though — those on production lines make do with a more limited set of flex-work options, like shift swapping.
Brown’s former company, L3Harris Technologies Inc., told its US-based employees to come back to the office full-time last month.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.