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The Street
The Street
Colette Bennett

Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary Has Strong Opinion on Whether Employees Will Return to the Office

Regardless of topic or whether you want to hear it or not, it's pretty much a sure bet that "Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary has some thoughts to share.

O'Leary tends to be bombastic about his takes on everything from the future of crypto to how to succeed as an entrepreneur (pro tip on the latter: forget about having family, pets, or any other semblance of normal humanity).

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However, a stopped clock is right twice a day -- and when it came to discussing working from home versus returning to the office in a segment on CNN This Morning, O'Leary hit the nail squarely on the head.

"For the last three years, there's a new generation of worker, particularly in financial services and in technology and engineering, that has no intention of working in an office," O'Leary said. 

"They never have and they never will. People keep saying, oh they're all going to come back -- they're not. So when you're out there hiring now, part of the negotiation is where they're going to work. So if you're competing -- and we still are, because unemployment is under 4%, this is an extraordinary economy -- we're supposedly going into a recession from unemployment makes no sense. But the reality is, pumping $3 trillion into the economy has provided a lot of liquidity."

O'Leary went on to use his own employees as an example.

"We're hiring every day and we're competing every day and we cannot get them in the office. 44% of our employees across our venture portfolio work remotely, and they ain't coming into the office, period," he said.

However, O'Leary sees employees working from home as a bit of a trade off.

"I call my employees 24/7," he said. "That's the deal. If you don't work in the office, I can call you at two in the morning if we have a crisis, and they're gonna answer. That's the way they're used to it now."

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