'Disgrace, Insanity... People Working From Bali': Bolt CEO Revokes Flexible Work Policy, Asks Staffs To Return To Office

The CEO of Bolt, the Estonian rival to ride-hailing app Uber, has ordered the employees to return to the office three days a week as he observed that people were taking holidays on company time while working from destinations like Bali. Markus Villig believed that his staff were 'disconnected' and 'scattered across the world' and partially revoked the company's flexible work policy, the Telegraph reported. 

Villig has introduced a new mandatory policy in which all the 4,000 employees are now required to work from the office three days a week or 12 days per month. He criticised the employees in an internal memo cited by the Telegraph. He expressed his disbelief by saying that it was a "disgrace" that less than half of employees worked in the office for at least two days each week.

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“We are too scattered, people feel disconnected, attrition is too high, and our offices lie empty,” the CEO said. “We will stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali. That is a vacation, not what we hired them to do,” he said. As per the memo, the staff will still have some flexibility but will need to live within travel distance of the office.

Villig has urged the employees to create a "fun" office environment and claimed that working in person will improve relationship-building, communication, and mental well-being among employees. "We are absolutely fine if some people decide this is not for them, as the cultural impact far outweighs it," the CEO said.  

"Even the largest companies, from Amazon to Tesla to Apple, realise that in order to stay at the top, they have to retain an intense culture and have got people back to the office three to five days a week. We are a tiny company in comparison, and to ever reach that scale, we have to work harder and innovate more than them," he wrote. Villig emphasised that the firm can fall into mediocrity if the employees do not improve their performance.