A major CEO backer of the remote office model concedes one big work from home failure

It’s been three years since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the idea of working from home upended the office landscape for good. While some employers have decided to fully embrace a remote work environment, and experts declare that “return to office is dead,” major employers including Amazon and Google are mandating their employees to return to the office, and in some cases, tying promotion and performance reviews to in-person attendance.

Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Ellevest, an investment and financial literacy platform for women, has been a vocal advocate for remote work. The various benefits — lower fixed costs, a larger talent pool, and added flexibility for women and under-represented groups — factor into why Ellevest has remained fully remote since the pandemic.

At the recent CNBC Workforce Executive Council Summit in New York City, Krawcheck said since going fully remote — a decision that she said was made predominantly as a result of being a lean startup that could not justify the office costs and because the model enabled her to recruit a more diverse workforce — teams have been more productive and successful at hitting deadlines. “We’re hitting deadlines like never before,” she said. But she added that the one drawback is a less creative company. “Let’s have a Zoom to brainstorm? Not many people do it, and you can’t run into each other at the coffee machine when you’re on Zoom,” Krawcheck said. “We are more productive and we are less creative.”

Krawcheck’s opinion isn’t unpopular, especially among her former colleagues on Wall Street — she held top posts at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch before founding Ellevest. She described the Wall Street CEO view as often being tied to a “command and control” approach they came up in, and which leads them to still want to see people physically in the office, even if that alone is a weak reason. Among top CEOs who have publicly cited losses in creativity,…