“It’s not that they don’t want to work from home. They don’t want to f—ing work,” John Morgan said of the reaction to his firm’s new work-from-home policies
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NEED TO KNOW
- Billionaire attorney John Morgan defended his personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan’s controversial work-from-home policy on the Aug. 27 episode of The Iced Coffee Hour
- The policy includes monitoring employees with cameras and productivity tracking, leading to backlash and resignations
- “It’s not that they don’t want to work from home. They don’t want to f—ing work,” Morgan claimed
Billionaire attorney John Morgan is defending his company’s controversial work-from-home policy.
The founder of the personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan appeared on the Aug. 27 episode of The Iced Coffee Hour, where he explained his path to success, how he became a billionaire and how he’s maintained his firm as a billion-dollar company.
Toward the end of the episode, Morgan, 70, bluntly said, “We’re living in a world where there’s a lot of people that just don’t want to work.”
He then shared his experience of having employees who didn’t want to work in the office, explaining that “nobody wanted to come back to the office.”
The nationwide personal injury firm employs around 5,000 people, including over 1,100 attorneys, and when it implemented the new policy, Morgan’s company proposed an unusual deal for those who wanted to work from home.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. You can work from home, but guess what? We’re going to put a camera on your computer. We’re going to put a camera up your ass,” he said.
“We won’t look at you. It’ll be a pixel,” he recalled telling the employees, and then revealed that, as a result, 23 people quit in the first week.
Credit: @TheIcedCoffeeHour/YouTube
“Oh my gosh. It’s not that they don’t want to work from home. They don’t want to f—ing work,” he said, noting that the employees who remained at the company and wished to work from home were told they would be heavily monitored.
“We’re going to have a camera on you,” Morgan said. “We’re going to be monitoring you closer than we would.”
He said the firm would track employees with an “incredible” productivity score that measured keystrokes, and noted that his “pissed off” employees were less than enthused with the system.
“But they really need to be pissed off at themselves,” Morgan said. “How do you justify that?”
This isn’t Morgan’s first time discussing the work-from-home policy; he previously defended using cameras on the Aug. 1 episode of the Success Story podcast.
He said that when employees quit after the firm introduced cameras and other productivity tracking measures, they called the firm’s actions “invasive,” a characterization he disagreed with.
“They didn’t want to be accountable,” Morgan said. “What they didn’t want to do is they didn’t want to work because they’re lazy, but they want to be paid ‘to work from home.’ ”
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“Look, there are people that I have no problem working from home because there are certain people that, you know, they’re going to work from home,” he said, adding, “but very few.”
“So what I think is they don’t want to work, and they’re mad when they’re caught,” he said. “But deep down, if they’re honest, they’re mad at themselves.”
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