Bloomberg’s EIC Micklethwait: Come back to the office

Bloomberg editor in chief  John Micklethwait sent out the following to the staff on Tuesday evening:

To All in Editorial & Research,

As you have will seen from Mike’s latest update to our in-office policy, he has asked each of us managers to follow up with a few more details about the world after October 1st. Editorial & Research is a very broad church — with some jobs, such as a TV presenter or a managing editor, plainly needing to be in the office more than, say, an analyst at BNEF or an investigative reporter. I believe that we work best when most of us are in the office together (we have already seen the benefits of being in at least three days a week), but in E&E, we also judge individuals by what they produce. When I arrived at Bloomberg, I made it clear that in order to boost that production, and improve its quality, I thought our journalists should be out of the office reporting more.

Given our department’s breadth, we will let your managers explain to each of you what they expect you to do. Over the next couple of months, there will be plenty of time for those discussions. But as a general guide: yes, we do expect those managers to be in the office four days a week (as most of them are already) — and I am looking forward to seeing more of the rest of you too. Our priority remains enabling you to keep creating the great journalism and research our customers want. And of course we will continue to honor any formal flexible working arrangements that people have.

I would also like to provide a little more clarity for what you do when you are out of the office. At the moment, the “C” option, which our colleagues in other departments use for visiting clients and conferences, feels like an odd category for many of us. So I am pleased that we will shortly have an “R” function that you can enter when you are out of the office on a reporting or research project, meeting sources, etc. That will of course count the same as being in the office.

If you have any questions, please ask our managers. And thank you again for all your continued hard work.

John