Bolt CEO changes RTO policy to ‘stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali.’ Read the memo.

Bolt founder and CEO Markus Villig speaks on stage at Web Summit 2021 in Lisbon, Portugal.

The CEO of European mobility app Bolt didn’t mince words earlier this month when calling workers back to the office.

Bolt is an Uber competitor that offers services including ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, and e-scooter rentals in its app. Starting in January, Bolt will require all of its employees to work from the office at least 12 days a month, or roughly 3 a week, the company confirmed to B-17.

CEO Markus Villig wrote in a memo to staff that the company had “seen too much complacency” in where employees work in recent years and that they had a choice to either “restart our ambitious culture to compete in the highest league” or “fall into mediocrity.”

“We are too scattered, people feel disconnected, attrition is too high, and our offices lie empty,” Villig wrote. “I find it a disgrace to our culture that less than 50% of employees come to the office +2 days per week.”

He referenced tech industry giants like Amazon, Tesla, and Apple, which have implemented varying forms of return-to-office mandates.

Amazon recently announced corporate employees will have to work in the office 5 days a week starting in January. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called remote work “morally wrong.” Apple’s hybrid pilot program requires employees to work from the office three days a week.

Bolt’s CEO also criticized the idea of people working remotely from vacation destinations.

“We will stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali,” he said. “That is a vacation not what we hired them to do.”

A Bolt spokesperson confirmed the memo was sent to employees.

“We believe that in-person collaboration drives innovation and performance, and our existing policy advises employees to work from a Bolt office for 2-3 days a week,” a Bolt spokesperson said. “Starting from 1 January, this policy will be formalised with employees being asked to work from a Bolt office 12 days per month. We continue to listen to our colleagues and remain committed to fostering a culture that values engagement and innovation, while empowering people to work flexibly and effectively.”

In his memo, Villig said the company saw five benefits from in-person work: Raising the performance bar, improved collaboration, better relationships between team members and other teams at the company, better information flow and idea generation, and improved mental well-being.

Bolt is based in Tallinn, Estonia, and operates in more than 45 countries. In 2022, Bolt said it’d raised 628 million euros in a round of funding led by Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Management, with the investment valuing Bolt at 7.4 billion euros.

The company is reportedly eyeing an IPO in 2025.

Read Bolt CEO’s full memo to staff:

Following up from the All-hands on Tuesday I’ll explain my thinking about the new Return to Office & Location policy and your role as a manager in supporting this transition.

The summary is that I deeply believe that we work better in person, not remotely.

The longer version is that we have a choice to make as a company. Either we restart our ambitious culture to compete in the highest league or we fall into mediocrity. 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 office 3-5 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.

We have seen too much complacency in the last few years on how we recruit, where people live and when and where people work. We are too scattered, people feel disconnected, attrition is too high, and our offices lie empty. I find it a disgrace to our culture that less than 50% of employees come to the office +2 days per week.

We will return to being a high performance organisation from 1st of January:

Mandatory 12 days a month in office for all employees.

Min 2 days a week. Team leaders have the authority to do more – many sales teams do 5 already.

We have invested millions into having fantastic offices already, but in sites with lack of space we will set designated days per team to divide nicely.

Relative to the top tech companies we believe this is generous and allows plenty of flexibility to employees.

We will stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali. That is a vacation not what we hired them to do.

Reducing the number of sites to 2 for global roles.

By default every department will have 2 hubs – Tallinn first and by default London secondary.

Some large departments like tech retain more. If you have questions, ask your department head.

In order for people to get the most value of being in office their team needs to be there. Some departments have scattered teams and we will consolidate that.

To be clear this refers to global roles, not local or regional.

There are 5 benefits to working in person:

Raise the performance bar. We see a strong correlation between office attendance vs performance and engagement.

Improve collaboration. Having meetings in person is more effective than video calls.

Improve relationships in and between teams. Interacting with people in person is better for solving conflict and building positive relations. Video calls are transactional, while having coffee or lunch together is infinitely better for relationship building.

Better information flow and idea generation. Having informal chats in the office is impossible to replicate remotely.

Improve mental wellbeing. Having positive in person interactions is a huge benefit for stress.

As managers I ask you to help me with this:

Sell this message to your teams.

Lead by example by being present in the office more often starting from next week.

Create an environment where your teams want to come into the office. It should be engaging and fun to work in person, not a chore.

Monitor and manage poor attendance. We are absolutely fine if some people decide this is not for them, as the cultural impact far outweighs it.

The culture at Bolt is unique and we need to work every day to retain it. I cannot do that alone – we all have to take accountability for making this a fantastic place to work, where people come to do the best work of their lives.

@nick.walker and his team is preparing the FAQ and other details to be shared to you on Monday and we plan the internal comms after that. Go badgers!