Is Remote Work Secretly Sabotaging Your Career? Emma Grede's Controversial Take

Forget daily Zoom meetings and telecommuting from home in your pajamas. If you really want to get to work, you’ve got to go to work, says Emma Grede, the London-based founder and fashion designer best known for collaborations with the Kardashians that have earned her ownership stakes in the denim brand Good American, Skims shapewear, and Safely, a line of plant-based cleaning and self-care products. Her net worth is estimated at $300 million.

Work-from-home culture is actually killing life, Grede, 43, told attendees Saturday at the Inc. Founders House at SXSW in Austin, Texas. “That’s what I really believe. Look at the [post-COVID] statistics for marriage rates and birth rates. Indeed, there’s a loneliness epidemic.

“I met my husband at work,” she said. “I met all my best friends at work. You might not like what I’m saying, but it’s the truth. You’ve got to get out if you want s—t to happen.”

Grede expects her employees to report to the office five days a week. She believes proximity and visibility are vital to success. “You are not in line for the same promotions or pay increases when you are out of sight,” Grede contended. “Out of sight is out of mind. I’m working with the people who are in the room.”

That stance has earned Grede considerable blowback from critics who argue a stringent in-office schedule can have dire consequences for working moms. But she rejects that knee-jerk response, pointing out that she leads by example.

“I leave the office every day at 5 p.m. because I have four kids and I want to get home and have dinner with them and do bath and bedtime,” Grede said. “Because I do that, I’ve created the conditions for everybody else to leave at 5 p.m. if they have kids or a parent-teacher conference. You really have to model the type of behavior that you expect from your staff. It’s a two-way street.”

She also urges women not to be shy about making money a top priority. “Put money in the center of your plans,” said Grede, whose new book, Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life, will be published in April. “When you avoid the subject of money, guess what happens? The money avoids you.

“So, be really blatant. Have the audacity to say what you want and don’t ever be one of those people who say, ‘If I just do great work, the money will find me.’ It won’t. The money never finds you. You have to go after it unashamedly and be extremely focused on it. The women who do that, who don’t hide behind performative purpose, those are the women I see winning over and over again.”

And none of those women are winning by avoiding the office and waiting at home for the next Zoom meeting. “I always think that a Zoom call gets, like, 10 percent dumber for every person that’s on there,” Grede said. “When I see 20 people on the screen, I’m like, ‘Nothing is getting done here.’”