General Motors’ white-collar workforce will see markedly different culture post-pandemic as employees adopt a new initiative of how and where they will work.
GM on Tuesday introduced what it calls “Work Appropriately” to its global workforce of 155,000 employees.
Work Appropriately is not a policy, GM insists. It is a mindset, a culture shift that gives many salaried workers more flexibility to work remotely or come into the office if necessary to best perform their jobs.
It is a tipping point that will likely change GM’s footprint in southeast Michigan, though to what extent remains unknown.
The automaker may see fewer people inside its world headquarters in Detroit’s Renaissance Center on a daily basis, for example, and individual desks will give way to community work spaces.
Work Appropriately is not about saving money, GM says. It hasn’t even done that math yet.
But GM’s ability to recruit top talent rises exponentially with the flexibility Work Appropriately will offer future employees.
“COVID has had such a profound effect on all of our lives,” said Laura Jones, GM’s director of global talent. “We started thinking about a post-COVID state. It’s not about a policy or a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a solution and mindset that suits everyone.”
‘Work Appropriately’
The idea of Work Appropriately is simple: As a job permits, employees have flexibility to work where they will be most efficient.
Some groups will find hybrid solutions such as working in the office part-time and remotely at other times. Others will be empowered to develop a new flexibility to their in-person work, Jones said.
GM is still on track for salaried workers in southeast Michigan to return to the office in late June or early July, but Work Appropriately will be incorporated into how that happens for each of them.
The name Work Appropriately is derived from CEO Mary Barra’s 2009 move — when she was vice president of global human resources — to toss out GM’s 10-page treatise on clothing policies. Instead, she simply said, “Dress appropriately.” Barra empowered managers to work with their teams to decide the appropriate dress code for their jobs.
On Tuesday, Barra wrote in a statement that Work Appropriately is “based on extensive feedback from employees. We have spent months reviewing input from employees and analyzing our business results in relation to working differently — and smarter — during a pandemic.”
There are GM employees who will need to be in the workplace to meet GM’s business needs such as:
- Building vehicles
- Calling on car dealers
- Working in labs
- Developing and reviewing physical properties
- Working in warehouses
- Some experiential learning and collaboration
- Onboarding, coaching and team-building activities
But work that can be effectively done remotely includes:
- Solo work that doesn’t require an onsite resource
- Information sharing or status update meetings using tools like Microsoft Teams
For those jobs that require being onsite, Barra said that GM will look at ways to, “be more flexible, improve onsite spaces and work differently.”
At some of GM’s manufacturing sites, GM has committed to providing laptops and other devices and “allowing online trainings to be completed from work or from home, during work hours,” Barra said.
Talent pool opened
Work Appropriately is also a strong recruiting tool that GM believes will significantly open the talent pool, said Cyril George, GM’s global talent acquisition director.
That is key to the automaker, considering GM’s push to hire engineers to develop electric vehicles and self-driving cars. GM has said it aspires for all its new light vehicles to be zero emissions by 2035.
In the first quarter alone, GM made 3,300 new job offers, more new hires in the U.S. in the first quarter than GM did in all of 2020 and 2019 combined.
“A few years back, most of the hiring would have happened in or around Michigan,” George said. “But now we have so many satellite offices.”
About 20% of GM’s new hires will be working permanently remote and many of those people are in areas where GM has satellite offices such as Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta, George said. But GM is continuing to grow its recruiting beyond those three areas and Michigan.
“What about that awesome software person who lives in Bismarck, North Dakota?” said Jeff Massimilla, GM’s executive director of connected customer and mobility solutions. “We could allow them to stay there and if I need them to be in-person for a day, I’ll bring them in for a day and then they can go back home and develop that awesome software there.”
He said GM has been applying the philosophy to its 1,200 software engineers for some time now. But there are some current and prospective employees who have told Massimilla that they enjoy coming to an office for the social interaction, he said.
‘Learn as we go’
Work Appropriately fits GM now because flexibility is needed as a company, GM President Mark Reuss said. After all, the pandemic is not over.
“We can’t tell all 155,000 employees, ‘Here’s what you’re going to do next. …’ There’s no one solution for this,” said Reuss in a statement. “And that’s why we’ve determined that the best place for people to work is where they can be the safest, and still be the most effective. This process will be flexible and fluid. We will learn as we go, and we will adjust accordingly.”
One difference workers will notice is the look of the office.
“Pre-pandemic we started the solution of not necessarily assigned desks, but rather an assigned neighborhood. That will continue,” said Massimilla. “It’s more collaborative, with bigger conference rooms and work spaces rather than, ‘Go to this desk every single day.’ “
Massimilla said initially some employees thought it was “a scary thing” to not have a desk. But the feedback has been positive, he said.
GM recently resumed construction of GM Design West at the Global Technical Center in Warren. The extended design studio will be wall-free and have dedicated areas for in-person collaboration and expanded seating to accommodate teams of designers and engineers.
Last month, GM confirmed its plans to keep its world headquarters in the RenCen in Detroit. But just how many employees will occupy it is unclear as GM also shuffles hundreds of salaried workers to new locations around the state.
GM has said about 900 workers from its Customer Care and Aftersales offices in Grand Blanc will move to the Global Technical Center in Warren. Also, GM will move several marketing and product people from the RenCen to the Tech Center.
Finally, a “significant number” of new IT specialists will be assigned to work at the RenCen.
“I don’t have a comment on how the RenCen will be impacted,” Jones said, in relation to the Work Appropriately initiative. “The RenCen is a great environment and we have some big spaces there that we can go in and collaborate on, but we’re still learning.”
More:GM to expand tech center in Warren in quest for EV development. Here are the details
More:GM to move hundreds of salaried workers in Southeast Michigan locations
Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.