GM pauses return-to-office plan after employee backlash

General Motors Co. did an about-face on its own return-to-office plan Tuesday after causing an uproar among employees.

The original plan, released last Friday, required all GM corporate employees to come into physical locations for three days a week before the end of the year.

A weekend of employee backlash prompted a revised plan to be released Tuesday, which said that the decision to return to the office in a hybrid fashion would for now be left up to individual teams.

“We acknowledge that the timing of the [first] message, late on a Friday afternoon, was unfortunate. It was also unintentional,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in the Tuesday follow-up statement that was obtained by multiple outlets.

That said, the automotive giant hasn’t changed its goal of getting people back in the office three days a week by the start of the new year.

GM had been operating off what it called its “Work Appropriately” model since April 2021, where employees had the flexibility to work remotely full-time or hybridly depending on the demands of a current project.

The policy provided a boost to GM’s recruiting efforts last year, according to the Detroit Free Press. The company hired 10,000 people globally in 2021 and another 7,000 this year, most of whom work remotely.

But Ms. Barra said in her Tuesday statement that “the intangible benefits of in person collaboration are going to be a critical success factor as we move into a period of rapid launches.”

GM intends to listen to employee feedback and incorporate it in its updated plan to be released next month.