By RTL News··Amended:
RTL
The CEO of an Australian mining company is banning staff from leaving the office to get a cup of coffee. It’s costing the company too much money, he says. The billionaire previously banned employees from working from home.
During the presentation of the financial figures of the past year, CEO Chris Ellison of the mining company Mineral Resources spoke clearly. He wants to keep staff “captive all day long”, he said according to foreign media. “I don’t want them to leave the building.”
Ellison, 67, earned a salary of over 3.6 million euros last year. Some 5,600 people work for the company he founded, which is now worth almost 5 billion euros.
‘Do not work from home policy’
“I don’t want staff to leave the store to get a cup of coffee. A few years ago we calculated how much money that costs,” Ellison said.
“I have a no-work-from-home policy,” Ellison explained. “I would like to see all major companies join in, the sooner the better. We can’t afford this anymore.”
Last year, Mineral Resources, which has its headquarters in the Australian city of Perth, decided to stop staff from working from home. “Everyone is talking about a four-day week, but you can’t have people working three days a week and getting paid full time,” Ellison said.
Ellison isn’t the only major company executive to ban staff from working from home. British phone maker Nothing said last week that it would expect all staff to return to the office for the entire week, the BBC reported. “This may be a controversial decision, but it works best for our business and productivity,” the company wrote in an email to staff.
The Netherlands is the European champion in working from home, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) this spring. Last year, this involved more than 5 million people, more than half of all working Dutch people.
