- Billionaire investor Bill Ackman seems to have found a formula against the return-to-office pushback.
- His employees at Pershing Square can work from anywhere in July and August.
It's the end of the summer, and return-to-office mandates are firmly in place for millions of workers.
While many companies are still trying to figure out the best work arrangements amid pushback against RTO orders, billionaire investor Bill Ackman appears to have found a solution he thinks is working.
Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund Ackman founded, requires staff to be back in the office five days a week, with some flexibility allowed for contingencies like doctors' appointments, he told the New York Post in an interview on Thursday.
However, Pershing Square employees have the summer months of July and August to work from anywhere, with the caveat that they have to show up at the workplace if in-person teamwork is required.
"We've experimented with that for two years and that's worked well, people like the balance, and it works for our business," said Ackman, who is worth $3.6 billion as of Friday, according to Forbes. Ackman is not in Bloomberg's list of the world's top 500 billionaires.
Ackman's comments came as the world continues to grapple with the future of the workplace post-pandemic.
High-profile business leaders, including Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and billionaire investor Marc Andreessen, have all weighed in on the issue as they advocated a return to office.
In particular, younger workers would benefit from mentorship opportunities in person, said Dimon and Andreessen.
Dimon even said employees can work elsewhere if they don't like long commutes into the office. Meanwhile, Musk told CNBC in a May interview that remote work was "morally wrong."
Goldman Sachs, too, wants staffers to return to the office five days a week, upping the crackdown on working from home.
Pershing Square did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.