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Earlier this year, an announcement by Mitsubishi North America (MMNA)caught the attention of the entire automotive industry. The company would be shifting to work from home — forever.
At the time, MMNA’’s CEO called it “a critical moment to embrace, change, motivate and retain our talented employee base.” The decision represented a major culture shift for Mitsubishi but also presented some big challenges for company leaders.
So what exactly does “work from home forever” look like for Mitsubishi? A little different than you might think.
Mitsubishi’s Chief Legal Officer, Chief HR Officer, and Chief Compliance Officer Katherine Knight says she still sees people in the office every day, and seasonal parties and team meetings are usually still held in person. But the most important thing is that employees are offered to work the way that is most comfortable and efficient for them.
“Everybody is at a different place in their life. And it's one of the reasons why this choice, for me personally, was very important, because I want us to be as inclusive as possible,” Katherine says.
So how’s it going six months into the experiment? “Nobody has suggested we need to mandate days in the office. Absolutely not.”
Katherine joins Jan on this episode of the Automotive Leaders Podcast to talk about Mitsubishi’s move to remote work and how this OEM made that difficult decision. Tune into the episode for more on Mitsubishi’s “cultural revolution,” plus a peek into Katherine’s upbringing as a record store geek!
Themes discussed on this episode:
What she does: Katherine is the Chief Legal Officer, Chief HR Officer and Chief Compliance Officer at Mitsubishi Motors. As a C-suite executive at Mitsubishi North America, she led the charge in 2022 to allow U.S. employees to work from home forever.
On leadership: “ I'm trying to lead the department in a particular type of vision and a particular way of working. And that encompasses a lot of other things. It encompasses authenticity. It encompasses transparency. I don't expect people to go along with the vision if I'm not being completely transparent with them about what the challenges we're going to have are and how we're going to have to change how we do things. And I also don't expect them to go along with the vision if they get something different from me today than they do tomorrow, or they did yesterday. They need consistency from me.”
Timestamped inflection points from the show
[2:08] Free to choose: Today’s guest, Katherine Knight, discusses her traditional beginnings as a trial lawyer and how she fell in love with employment law, particularly in the auto...
