Wayfair’s CEO Wants Staff to Work Harder. Your Boss Probably Agrees.

livemint.com:

If you want to know what the boss really wants from you in 2024, Wayfair Chief Executive Niraj Shah’s staff memo might be a good place to start. Shah emailed Wayfair’s corporate employees in the thick of the holiday season. First he praised everyone’s effort in returning the online home-goods retailer to profit, then called on them to dig deeper.

“Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from. There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success," Shah wrote. The email, first reported by Business Insider and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, set off a brouhaha across social media.

Some posters called it insensitive, especially after Wayfair’s layoffs in 2023. Others declared they would boycott the company. To plenty of business leaders, though, Shah’s unvarnished message is cathartic—even if they would phrase parts of it less bluntly.

Many of these executives privately fret that workers are too preoccupied with flexibility and work-life balance and that a more gung-ho attitude will be required to take on the business uncertainties of the coming year. If only they could say it out loud. “Behind the scenes, leaders are frustrated with this perspective of employees and this idea of quiet quitting," says Peter Aceto, former CEO of ING Direct in Canada, now called Tangerine, who advises financial-technology CEOs in the Americas.