Martha Stewart isn't backing down on her views about remote work and the three-day, in-person workweek that some companies have instituted following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Appearing June 7 on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna, the 81-year-old expressed her respect for the grind and the importance in her life of working in person.
“It’s just that my kind of work is very creative and it is very collaborative, and I cannot really stomach another Zoom here, Zoom there,” she said. “It just doesn’t get the work done in the right way.”
Stewart explained that while the global pandemic caused people to quarantine, she “took every precaution” and set up an office space in her home for employees to gather. In a previous interview with Footwear News, she noted that she continued to work five days a week.
For companies opting to require working in person just three days per week, Stewart told fourth hour co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, “I just don’t agree with it. I just don’t.”
“It’s frightening because if you read the economic news and look at what’s happening everywhere in the world, a three-day workweek doesn’t get the work done, doesn’t get the productivity up,” she added. “It doesn’t help with the economy, and I think that’s very important.”
In the former interview with Footwear News, the television personality compared the economic impact of workflow changes in a country like France versus the United States.
“You can’t possibly get everything done working three days a week in the office and two days remotely. Look at the success of France with their stupid … you know, off for August, blah blah blah. That’s not a very thriving country,” she told the outlet. “Should America go down the drain because people don’t want to go back to work?”
At the height of the pandemic in 2021, Stewart told Harper's Bazaar in an interview that employers should be allowed to call employees anytime — “even on weekends.”
She then referenced a conversation with a new employee who, when she called him up on a Sunday, said he was unable to talk because he was taking a bath.
“I knew I couldn’t work with that person. I just couldn’t,” she said at the time. “If you can’t talk on a Sunday and you take umbrage that I’m calling you on a Sunday — you know, if you are a terribly religious person, I take that into consideration. But I knew this guy was not a terribly religious person.”
