Estonian mobility platform Bolt demands its global employees return to its offices, with CEO Markus Villig criticising remote work, according to Fortune.
Founded in 2013 as Taxify, Bolt started as a taxi company before expanding into short-term car rental, ride-sharing, food delivery and electric scooter rentals. Bolt serves more than 150 million customers and 3 million driver and courier partners worldwide.
Villig expressed frustration with employees working in remote locations such as Bali. He called such practices “disconnected” and indicative of a too “complacent” hiring policy.
We will stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali. That is a vacation, not what we hired them to do.
The CEO noted that less than half of Bolt’s employees work in the office at least two days a week. A spokesperson confirmed that starting 1 January, the company would introduce a hybrid work policy requiring employees to work in the office 12 days a month.
Bolt’s move follows a similar move by Amazon, which also adjusted remote working policies after initially adopting hybrid models during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, critics warned that the heavy-handed approach could spark resistance or affect morale, which could affect the company’s productivity and efficiency.
Bolt reported a loss of €91.9m on revenue of €1.7bn in 2023.
