Twitter's work-from-home policy scrapped as Elon Musk warns of 'arduous' road ahead

The social media giant told its remaining staff the “road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed”.

He said that staff would no longer be allowed to work from home, except in special cases, which Musk would personally review.

In an email seen by the Guardian, the billionaire Tesla CEO wrote: “Remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have a specific exception. Managers will send the exception lists to me for review and approval.”

Musk’s dim view of remote work is widely known. At Tesla, staff are expected to spend a “minimum of 40 hours in the office per week”.

He wrote in an email to staff in June: “The office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo-office. If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.

“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That is why I lived in the factory so much — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt.”

Musk’s ban on remote work is in stark contrast to Twitter’s former chief executive Parag Agrawal’s views, who in March said staff could continue to work from home “forever”.

Georgina Calvert-Lee, senior consultant and barrister at Bellevue Law warned Musk is "not the only employer whose knee jerk reaction to a financial crunch is to demand that employees return to the office".

"Imposing a policy that everyone goes back to pre-pandemic working practices, in line with their contracts, is within Mr Musk’s rights," she said.

"However, in imposing a new policy to require staff to abide by their contractual place of work, Twitter will have to be careful not to indirectly discriminate against those for whom a five-day office schedule may pose particular difficulties.

"Working mothers or those with some disabilities may have a claim for indirect discrimination arising from this policy."

It comes after about half of Twitter’s 7,500-strong team around the world were axed on Friday as he seeks to reduce costs.

Staff were told on Thursday through a company-wide memo that they would receive an email to their personal email accounts if they were being fired.

But some staff reported they were locked out of their company laptops, with their Gmail and Slack work accounts revoked.

Musk, who purchased the platform for $44bn (£39bn), said the cuts were a result of a dramatic drop in ad revenue, causing, he said the company to lose $4mn a day. Advertising accounts for 90% of Twitter’s revenue.

Audi, General Motors and Pfizer were among those who halted advertisements, amid concerns Musk will scale back misinformation and security protections on the platform.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety, tweeted: “While we said goodbye to incredibly talented friends and colleagues yesterday, our core moderation capabilities remain in place.

He said moderation staff experienced the least impact of the cuts.

Roth tweeted: “Most of the 2,000-plus content moderators working on front-line review were not impacted, and access will be fully restored in the coming days.

“More than 80% of our incoming content moderation volume was completely unaffected by this access change. The daily volume of moderation actions we take stayed steady through this period.”

Twitter is now facing a lawsuit from former employees who say they were not given enough notice under US federal law.

In the UK, The Prospect Union, which represents technology workers, has written a letter wrote a letter to business secretary Grant Schapps.

“It is clear that Twitter are treating their employees in an unacceptable way, locking them out of company platforms without notice and communicating only by impersonal emails,” it said.

On Wednesday, Meta, the company which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, cut its workforce by 13% in its first ever round of redundancies.

11,000 employees are to be laid off this week. Meta have started laying off staff in Ireland on Wednesday.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said that revenue growth experienced during the coronavirus pandemic had not been sustained along with advertising performance and e-commerce both declining along with rising competition.