Good morning.
Is empathetic leadership over?
That’s the thesis of an article this week from our one-time sibling publication, TIME. And the authors have plenty of evidence to support it: Amazon’s Andy Jassy requiring a return to work; Salesforce’s Marc Benioff instituting a strict performance culture; Delta Air Lines banning its own employees from Delta Sky Clubs; Goldman Sachs nixing free coffee. As layoffs grow and the economy weakens, power is perceptibly shifting from employees to employers.
But don’t let the cyclical noise obscure the long-term trend. As I argue in Tomorrow’s Capitalist, the economy has changed dramatically over the last 50 years, with physical capital becoming ever less important in determining corporate value, and human capital becoming ever more. The companies that win in the future may or may not offer free food or unlimited time off. But they will be those that figure out how best to attract, retain and fully engage great talent.
The debate over return to work is a case in point. It’s no surprise employers want their employees to spend more time in the office. People are social animals, and team building is a contact sport. But it’s also no surprise that employees are clinging to the flexibility that they enjoyed during the pandemic. The challenge is combining the best of both. And I’d still put my money on those who creatively figure out the answer to that challenge.
By the way, one of today’s great business stories is Howard Schultz’s return to Starbucks, with the goal of beating back unionization efforts. In an interview this week, he said he came back because his company had “lost its way culturally.” But fixing that is no easy matter. I returned to Starbucks as a regular customer during the pandemic because of the ease of ordering on the app and picking up in store. But the result of that change is that Starbucks employees have became the equivalent of production line workers. Happy customer, unhappy worker.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
TOP NEWS
More Meta layoffs
Meta is planning to lay off thousands of workers. As part of this, the company is preparing for a reorganization that will flatten the layers of management between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company's interns. This effort will include pushing some leaders into lower-level roles without direct reports, while others may oversee a higher number of employees as their teams grow bigger. And the company is considering more traditional cuts too—read: slashing some projects and jobs. Washington Post
Euronext’s €5.5bn bid for Allfunds
Euronext has made a €5.5bn bid for Allfunds, a fund platform connecting buyers and sellers of investment products. Euronext's offer of €8.75 per share represents an ample premium on the value of Allfunds, whose shares surged by as much as 29% on the back of the news. Financial Times
Google subcontractor woes
Almost 2,000 workers at Google's subcontractors, including Cognizant Technology Solutions, Accenture and Appen, say they are underpaid and lack benefits, according to survey responses from the Alphabet Workers Union. The AWU, which represents a small number of direct employees, sent the survey to about 26,000 workers and spent about six months collecting the response. Bloomberg
AROUND THE WATERCOOLER
Tesla is opening its global engineering headquarters in California after Elon Musk left the state in a huff 2 years ago, by Bloomberg
Bill Gates just bought a $902 million stake in Heineken—part of it is for him personally, and the rest for his charity, by Bloomberg
Office vacancy will skyrocket 55% by the end of the decade as hybrid and remote work push real estate to an ‘inflection point’, by Tristan Bove
Despite strange A.I. behavior and major fixes Microsoft is bringing its Bing chatbot to a phone near you, by The Associated Press
We’re in danger of falling into 1970s-style inflation without aggressive interest rate hikes, according to a top Fed official, by Will Daniel
This edition of CEO Daily was edited by Jackson Fordyce.
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