Employees at French cosmetics giant L’Oréal have been returning to the office three days a week for more than a year. But the company’s upper management decided that wasn’t enough. Starting last week, employees are required to work twice a month on Fridays. The company’s 87,000 employees were informed of the new rules last month, which went into effect Thursday. Sunday Times report. Executives say they hope the new rules will “encourage employee collaboration.” times.
Things weren’t always like this. Back in November 2022, L’Oréal US CEO David Greenberg, like many of his colleagues, announced that employees would have to return to the office three days a week. Mr. Greenberg was content to accept an agreement in which employees at the cosmetics giant’s West Coast headquarters in El Segundo, California, would be welcomed back with a personal butler.
For $5 an hour, permanent employees at L’Oréal, whose subsidiaries include Kiehl’s, Maybelline and La Roche-Posay, can hire a concierge to help with personal chores. Los Angeles Times It was reported at the time. This includes things like driving to the gas station, picking up laundry, and taking your pet to dog daycare.
L’Oréal has offered concierge benefits in some form since 2009, but with everyone going remote during the pandemic, they’ve taken on new importance as a bargaining chip to get employees back to their desks. Ultimately, the company was in a better position than other companies. The office has a gym, restaurant, tons of free merchandise, and even a coffee bar that doubles as a bar. luck Reported in 2022.
Still, the near-free concierge benefit is the crown jewel. L’Oréal subsidized the cost of these concierges, and CEO Greenberg felt it was worth it. “We are in a human-driven industry,” Greenberg said. LA Times. “[There is] It requires engagement, creativity, sharing and learning from each other. ”
Of the large companies that have similarly enacted return-to-office mandates, including Meta, Salesforce, and Google, only L’Oréal made a real effort to make the deal more favorable. Other companies have actually worked backwards, stripping workers of benefits they enjoyed during the pandemic. (Meta is ending free laundry and dry cleaning benefits in 2022 and shortening the cut-off time for free meal rules from 6:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.)
passion, attachment, creativity
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Nicolas Hieronymus, the company’s global CEO, said that even if they come to work three days a week, employees lack “passion, attachment and creativity.” said.
If you ask other business leaders, this is an unusual move. Over the summer, Stephen Ross, the billionaire chairman of Vornado Corporation, one of New York City’s largest commercial landlords, publicly deemed Friday “to perish forever,” and even Monday as in jeopardy. Ta.
“I thought it would be more stable this way, but it turned out…Friday.” [is] Nick Bloom, an economist and home health expert at Stanford University, said he is increasingly winning in the WFH stakes. luck Email in August. “I think this is part of a larger push towards coordinated hybrid, where our companies are encouraging people to come to work on the same day.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fridays are always the busiest day in the office. Average workers jumped at the chance to start their weekends a little earlier, and even before the pandemic, the appeal of “Summer Fridays” spoke to the general public’s desire for a softer Saturday. With the growing push for a four-day work week, with Fridays typically cut first, it’s no wonder L’Oréal is one of the few companies to specifically mandate Fridays.
Not so as far as L’Oreal is concerned. That’s one reason L’Oréal “got serious” about returning to the office after the pandemic, Hieronymus continued in Davos. Now they say, ‘Oh my God, that was a mistake, please come back.’ ”
“I think it’s important to be in the office. It’s about serendipity. It’s about meeting people,” Hieronymus said, adding that remote work is “very bad” for workers’ mental health. On the other hand, in-person work is “essential for the company and for the employees. It’s also fair to the blue-collar workers who work in the factories every day.”