Hollywood Reporter: Warner Bros. Discovery’s Return-to-Office Plan Has Some Staffers Stressed

Story from Hollywood Reporter:

After closing a $43 billion merger in April to create Warner Bros. Discovery, CEO David Zaslav had a request for staff as he oversees the transition. “Be patient with us,” he told Oprah Winfrey, who interviewed him during a town hall in Burbank, per a source. (Discovery is majority owner of Winfrey’s OWN.) “It’s going to be a challenge.”

Zaslav also made clear his preference for in-person work. “I don’t think we’ll ever get back to five days a week” in the office, he told Winfrey. But, “I really believe in being together. … You don’t build a narrative on Zoom. You don’t get a mentor on Zoom. You got to come to work. That’s where a lot of the joy is and that’s where a lot of the creativity comes from.”

Multiple staffers say they now fear they’ll be living the worst of two worlds: They feel pressured to return to the office and are expected to be available early in the morning. (As previously reported by THR’s Kim Masters, Zaslav is an early riser who sometimes expects West Coast execs to attend 5 a.m. staff meetings.)

A source says, Zaslav walked around offices on the WB lot in mid-April and inquired why they weren’t more full, a question that left one person “alarmed,” as many are worried about the lingering pandemic. Another source confirmed the account and says it stoked fear among some employees already nervous about job cuts and a reported $3 billion worth of cost synergies to come.

Chief people and culture officer Adria Alpert Romm provided clarity in a memo to employees April 25, informing them that WBD staffers would be shifting to a hybrid work schedule of at least three days a week in the office by June 1.

“We want to build our new WBD culture and start working as one team, and the best and fastest way to do this is being together,” she wrote. “In some cases, employees who are considered essential personnel or who require daily access to their office, tools, and teams, will be in more frequently. A small number of our employees who work autonomously and do not need access to the office may work fully remote.”

Another source shoots down reports of discontent and claims the sentiment among peers about the early days of the Zaslav regime has largely been positive. “People are mostly glad that the AT&T era is over,” says the source. A WBD rep had no comment.

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