- Elon Musk has been criticized repeatedly due to his decision to fire 50 percent of Twitter’s global workforce.
- Now he’s infamous for his hardcore management style by giving his employees a deadline to accept new terms of having to work late hours at the night with very high intensity.
- However, his plans maybe backfire as many employees are handing in their resignations and leaving Twitter behind.
The richest man in the world Elon Musk is definitely one of the most successful and hardworking people too.
The current CEO of Twitter already has many successful companies such as – Tesla and SpaceX. Both companies have achieved very significant results and are two of the biggest firms in their respective fields of electric cars and commercialization of space travel respectively.
But since his acquisition of Twitter, Musk has been surrounded by controversies and has been in the news but not for positive reasons.
It all started with his axing of a number of employees at various top posts in the company. Musk fired around 50 percent of the global workforce amounting to around 7,500 people by locking them out of their work accounts and devices.
Other examples include ex-CEO Parag Agarwal, Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy, and trust; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Sean Edgett, who has been general counsel at Twitter since 2012. According to employees who wished to stay anonymous, Edgett had to be escorted out of the headquarters building after his firing.
Questions about his work ethic
Added to his infamy is more news about how Musk wants to fast-track the process of earning more profits and make Twitter a money-winning organization as soon as possible.
He is ignoring the fact that it takes time to adjust and imply new methods of working and also takes time to understand requirements for a successful organizational change.
Some of the key factors in implementing a successful organizational change include having a crystal clear and compelling vision that is passed down to employees via effective communication.
It also requires employee participation and most importantly a clear and sorted plan as to how to achieve the desired change to produce better results. At this point, one doubts whether Musk has a plan in place or not.
“Hardcore” management style
Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter on October 27, some of his moves have been rather rash and have been heavily criticized. Some of the first steps included his decision to completely stop employees from working from home and the lunches which were supplied by the office.
Musk also sacked around 3700 employees and even the way to do so was rather harsh. There was no prior notice and the employees got to know about their sacking when their laptops stopped working suddenly in the morning.
This was followed by Musk snooping on his employees to know what they say about him. He hired a team of snoopers to know about those employees who criticized him by making them go through the Slack profile and private messages of the employees.
Such actions were followed by his decision about extreme working measures. It’s been reported that Musk informed his employees about a new “extremely hardcore” routine for Twitter employees.
This would mean employees have to work late hours at the night with very high intensity. He also gave a deadline to his employees stating whether they would accept the new terms and conditions at the workplace or could submit their resignation.
Plan backfires
On starting his new conditions of an “extremely hardcore” Twitter, almost 500 employees bid their farewell and dropped their resignation letters. Musk hadn’t anticipated this backfiring of his plan and had to retreat his steps.
He started by trying to convince some of his key staff members to revoke their resignation and stay. He also went back on his policy to abolish work-from-home completely.
It’s been reported that Musk has asked his Team managers to grant work-from-home allowances provided that the employees were giving excellent results and exceeding expectations. He was still not ready to compromise on the pace or amount of work that’s been done.
