- Smucker publishes its core-weeks schedule a year in advance to allow staff and teams to plan. Most take place every other week except for July and December, when Smucker holds only one core week a month to allow for summer vacations and winter holidays. Leaders reserve meetings requiring deep focus for core weeks—say, an Uncrustables strategy session, a training for a customer-service team or a multiday business planning conference.
I mean... we're probably 25-40% remote and we do health care. Do we need to examine you? Then you need to come into the office. Do you need to examine someone? Then you need to come into the office. Is this a talkin' appointment? Frickin' talk from the beach we don't give a fuck, it bills the same.
Our receptionist told us recently (before we gave her a raise, incidentally) that this is the best, least-stressful job she's ever had, in no small part because if she runs out of shit to do she reads a book. We've also set it up so that if she can't come in for weather or whatever her job can be done by anyone with a login from anywhere in the world, which has come in super-handy. There's shit you need to be there for? And I absolutely agree that you're going to make much better bonds and collaborate much better from just eating in the same room from time to time? But you sure don't need to do it every day.
This is still grossly exploitative. It would be unreasonable for any job with 25% required business travel to not reimburse employees for all associated expenses. Their own CPO admits that 2 years of work from home was successful, but these facts are clearly being overridden by the feelings of their old-school executives. Screw this guy. This attitude is unbecoming when it's coming from the mayors of New York City and San Francisco. It is pathetic coming from the leader of a 9000 person company town. He's lucky that Smuckers is still a family-run company, and hasn't been seduced away to a neighboring state with the promise of tax breaks. Nicole Massey lives in San Francisco and commutes to Orrville for core weeks. Good for her for overcoming the backwards corporate culture that was thwarting her advancement. Inflexible policies like mandatory in-office days are known to harm recruiting and retention of women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups. It's no surprise why this lunchroom looks like a bag of marshmallows.about 25% of the time ... employees can live anywhere in the U.S. so long as they pay their own way to get to Orrville
If Orrville Mayor Dave Handwerk had his wish, Smucker employees would be back in the office five days a week
Massey ... said she spent much of her time at Smucker in a nonmanagement role, not wanting to take on a leadership position if she couldn’t be in Orrville full-time...
I don't think it's fair to call "you must be in the office 25% of the time" "required business travel." When I was dual-living in Los Angeles and Seattle, I was required "in the office" about 33% of the time. I wasn't the first person to do it, either - I had a coworker who lived in New Mexico for tax and sanity purposes but he also had a cabin up by big bear. When there was work, he was in LA. When there wasn't, he was either in Big Bear or south of Santa Fe, depending on the mood he and his wife were in. Cost of living for both of those properties was substantially less for LA. I worked with a great lady who would go and do these big scummy monumental reality TV shows and then retreat to her off-the-grid cabin in rural West Virginia - she cut her teeth doing local news in Charleston, WV (population 50k) but started making real money as an op on Jersey Shore. My former roommate is out of the country more often than in but is based in LA because it's where his friends are. Another friend uses Google Voice to appear as if he still lives in Santa Monica, rather than taking care of his parents' 500 acre farm on Lake Michigan. In all these cases, there's a very clear deal: "you can live anywhere but the work is here." Each and every one of us could have persisted in living in LA, but each and every one of us opted out (saved me about $1800 a month, others' mileage may vary). And I don't know that it's fair to go after the mayor of Orrville. 1300 workers is about 5000 people once you loop in families; a town with a population of 9,000 is gonna feel that. It's not like Smuckers' workers are commuting with their families; that town has effectively experienced a 60% reduction in population (and tax base) and when "essential weeks" are on, they crawl back up to maybe 55%. That's frickin' existential, man. So his job? Is to find a company with 1300 workers that feels like moving into a husk of a town 20 miles south of Akron. As to Smucker's, I guarantee their factory floor is a lot browner. Now here's the question: does this cause a bifurcation between the Morlocks and Eloi where the ruling class beams down from the mothership every four weeks to command the galley slaves? Or do the galley slaves start moving up and displacing the whip-holders because they're simply there more often? I think that's a thoroughly unresolved question with massive implications for the future of work in the United States.
If this is anything like most large corporations I've worked for, or otherwise am aware of via former friends, colleagues, etc. it's still very much the former in this, and in some cases where I've seen the latter, for those people, they end up back on the factory floor/in the factory/etc. due to the politics and unwelcoming nature of breaking into the mothership.As to Smucker's, I guarantee their factory floor is a lot browner. Now here's the question: does this cause a bifurcation between the Morlocks and Eloi where the ruling class beams down from the mothership every four weeks to command the galley slaves? Or do the galley slaves start moving up and displacing the whip-holders because they're simply there more often? I think that's a thoroughly unresolved question with massive implications for the future of work in the United States.