Business

California’s attorney general on Thursday announced an investigation into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries for allegedly overstating the role of recycling in curbing global plastic pollution and accelerating the crisis.
Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta said his office has subpoenaed Exxon Mobil for information relating to the company’s alleged role in deceiving the public and worsening plastics pollution.
The office didn’t specify what other companies it was investigating.

A logo of the Exxon Mobil Corp is seen at the Rio Oil and Gas Expo and Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil September 24, 2018.
Sergio Moraes | Reuters

California’s attorney general on Thursday announced an investigation into the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries for allegedly overstating the role of recycling in curbing global plastic pollution and exacerbating the crisis.
Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta said his office has subpoenaed Exxon Mobil for information relating to the company’s alleged role in deceiving the public and worsening plastics pollution. The office didn’t specify what other companies it was investigating. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As state legislatures and local governments in the 1980s began considering bills restricting or banning plastic products, fossil fuel and petrochemical companies began an “aggressive” and “deceptive” campaign to persuade the public that they could mitigate the waste problem by recycling, which the industry knew wasn’t true, Bonta alleged in a news release.
“For more than half a century, the plastics industry has engaged in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public, perpetuating a myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis,” Bonta said. “The truth is: The vast majority of plastic cannot be recycled.”

More from CNBC Climate:

“This first-of-its-kind investigation will examine the fossil fuel industry’s role in creating and exacerbating the plastics pollution crisis – and what laws, if any, have been broken in the process,” Bonta said.
The world produces about 400 million tons of plastic waste each year, according to estimates from the United Nations. Plastics take hundreds of years to decompose, and the majority of plastics end up sitting in landfills or the ocean. The U.S. only recycles about 9% of its plastic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Plastics are also set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by mid-century, according to the International Energy Agency. Fossil fuel and petrochemical companies recently invested more than $200 billion to expand plastic production worldwide.

Environmental activist groups on Thursday applauded the state’s investigation of the fossil fuel industry.
“For too long, ExxonMobil and other corporate polluters have been allowed to mislead the public and harm people and the planet,” said Graham Forbes, plastics global campaign lead at Greenpeace USA. “The science has become crystal clear that we must move away from fossil fuels and throwaway plastic.”
— CNBC’s Katie Brigham contributed reporting

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

1-800-Flowers on Thursday reported fiscal third-quarter results below analysts’ expectations and slashed its outlook for the year amid heightened inflation and waning demand for some of its gifts.
CEO Chris McCann said that solid demand around Valentine’s Day was offset by “overall slower consumer demand for everyday gifting occasions.”

Chris McCann, CEO, 1-800-Flowers
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Valentine’s Day wasn’t enough for 1-800-Flowers last quarter.
Shares of the company tumbled 15% Thursday and hit a fresh 52-week low of $9.13, after the online retailer reported fiscal third-quarter results below analysts’ expectations and slashed its outlook for the year amid heightened inflation and waning demand for some of its gifts.

Chief Executive Officer Chris McCann said that solid demand around Valentine’s Day was offset by “overall slower consumer demand for everyday gifting occasions” during the three-month period ended March 27.
1-800-Flowers also saw continued, and in some instances escalated, macroeconomic cost headwinds, he said.
That was combined with waning demand from consumers, “reflecting growing consumer concerns with rapidly rising inflation and geopolitical unrest,” McCann said. The war in Ukraine, triggered by Russia’s invasion in late February, has created widespread economic turmoil.
The CEO said in a press release that he sees cost obstacles to continue in the near term, too.
1-800-Flowers, which also owns Harry & David, Shari’s Berries and PersonalizationMall.com, cited increased expenses for labor, shipping and marketing.

The company reported a fiscal third-quarter net loss of $23.4 million, or 36 cents per share, compared with net income of $1.4 million, or 2 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, it lost 32 cents a share, bigger than the 28-cent loss that analysts polled by Refinitiv had been looking for.
Revenue of $469.6 million was down 1% from the year-ago period. That was short of the $486.9 million that analysts were anticipating.
For fiscal 2022, the company projected revenue growth of 3% to 5%, short of the 6.7% growth that analysts had expected. The company had been calling for revenue growth of 7% to 9% for fiscal 2022.
The company has a market cap of $674.5 million, as of market close Thursday. Shares are down 55% year to date.
“The current macroeconomy is highly unpredictable, with rising inflation and other factors impacting both costs and consumer demand,” said McCann. “However, it is important to note that we have faced challenging macro market conditions in the past and … we have emerged a bigger, better, and stronger company.”

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

The 2022 CNBC Disruptor 50 list will be revealed Tuesday, May 17th

Ginger.io was an original CNBC Disruptor 50 company, and growing out of an MIT Media Lab team, an early aggregator of digital health data and predictive analytics, and proponent of digital health care delivery.
While its seed funding occurred back in 2011, it became a unicorn in 2021, and in the same year merged with Headspace Health to create a $3 billion digital mental health company as the scale of the global mental health crisis grew throughout Covid.
Digital health and telehealth have high potential, and the space has seen a wave of consolidation to grow scale, but the sector has come crashing back down to earth this year, with some of the most prominent public companies, including Teladoc, Hims & Hers Health, and Amwell, seeing massive stock declines.

In this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.
In 2013, the idea of an app for mental health-care may have seemed novel, if not monumental in terms of a global challenge for a disruptive start-up. But times have changed. A global pandemic that led to a massive spike in mental health challenges, and the acceleration in adoption of technology-based health care, make what start-ups like Ginger.io set out to do more than a decade ago seem ahead of their time.

Globally, the World Health Organization estimates approximately 1 billion people are living with a mental disorder, and that the vast majority of those in low- and middle-income countries where mental, neurological and substance abuse disorders receive no treatment at all. The supply-demand imbalance for mental health care surged since the Covid-19 pandemic. One Lancet study estimated that 53 million additional cases of major depressive disorders and 76 million additional cases of anxiety disorders globally in 2020.
Ginger.io, which grew out of an MIT Media Lab team focused on aggregating and analyzing health care data, was featured on the inaugural CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2013 for leading the way in creating a data-driven, on-demand digital mental health ecosystem. It became a unicorn in 2021 after a $100 million funding round led by Blackstone.
At the time of the deal, Ginger reported revenue that had tripled year-over-year for three consecutive years and more than 500 employer customers including Paramount, Delta Air Lines, Domino’s, SurveyMonkey, Axon, 10x Genomics, and Sephora, as well as deals with corporate health-care concierge company Accolade and upstart online pharmacy Capsule.
The company said demand for its services increased three-fold during the pandemic, but as the scale of the mental health-care issue has grown, the start-ups tackling it have had to scale, too. Late in 2021, Ginger merged with an app-based business many people looking for some calm during Covid had come to know: meditation app Headspace.
The $3 billion merger of Headspace Health and Ginger was part of a larger consolidation trend within the digital health care space and movement by disparate health tech businesses to roll up a full suite of services under a model known as value-based care. Other original CNBC Disruptors — Castlight Health, which merged with Vera Whole Health, and Audax (now part of health giant UnitedHealth’s tech-based business Optum) — were among a recent wave of deals among some of the best known health tech start-ups. Virgin Pulse and Welltok. Accolade buying PlushCare. Grand Rounds and Doctors on Demand. Teladoc and chronic care company Livongo.

The combined Headspace-Ginger entity reaches nearly 100 million lives across 190-plus countries through direct-to-consumer business and 3,500+ enterprise and health plan partners.
“The increase in need is staggering,” said Russell Glass, CEO of Headspace Health. “You’ve gone from 20% of the [U.S.] population with a need to 40%, so a doubling of those with an acute anxiety, depression or other mental health need.” 
Headspace Health clients include Starbucks, Adobe, Delta Air Lines and Cigna. 

The original CNBC health care disruptors: Where are they now?

“Mental health is clearly a global challenge,” said Karan Singh, COO of Headspace Health. And it is a challenge that includes business complexity, from varying regulations around the world to language-based needs. “Everyone may use a different language to describe things that they are going through, but this is something that most everyone is going through,” Singh said.  
In the U.S., as the pandemic continues and regulations evolve, Headspace Health faces the challenge of getting lawmakers to view telehealth in the same category as traditional health care.
The Biden administration is focusing on mental health among other health-care priorities, including plans to decrease restrictions to practice virtually across multiple states, a step Glass said is long overdue and critical in building a mental health infrastructure that is equitable economically, racially and geographically.
“Solving this crisis should and can be our next JFK moonshot moment,” Glass said.
“I do think we are going to need some structural changes to ensure that some of the gains we’ve seen over the past few years actually persist,” added Singh. 
Virtual care has become a powerful and effective way for accessing care, and many people prefer it to in-person care, or at least to have the option.
“The cat’s out of the bag,” Glass said. “As consumers realize just how amazing telehealth is, and as the government bodies hear more and more from those consumers, we’re going to see change happen.”
Glass compares Headspace’s current regulatory struggle to the one faced by Uber, and cited how consumer preferences inspired regulatory change. 
But the digital health space is facing more acute market challenges, with its post-pandemic playbook being questioned, highlighted by this week’s disastrous earnings results from Teladoc, which included a more than $6 billion write down related to its acquisition of Livongo. Some of the most prominent names to go public associated with digital health have seen their public market values decimated over the past year, including Teladoc, Hims and Hers Health, and American Well, as core telehealth services become commoditized and the market opportunity among corporate buyers and insurers willing to pay more for a full suite of digital health care seems less assured.
Headspace Health sees room for both competitors, and more deal-making.
“We want to transform mental health care to improve the health and happiness of the world. We’re not going to do it alone,” Glass said. “A healthy competitive environment is critical to accomplish what we want to accomplish.”
Earlier this year, Headspace acquired Sayana, an AI-driven wellness company, further increasing the breadth of services and scope of care into its portfolio. 
As it attempts to increase access to mental health care services, the ultimate goal is to drive costs lower.
“How do we take the cost out of care? How do we keep people from needing higher levels of care?” Glass said.
Singh provided the answer. “Focus on prevention. Ultimately, that’s the only way out of this,” he said.  
—By Zachary DiRenzo, special to CNBC.com 

Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at companies like Headspace and entrepreneurs like Glass and Singh who continue to innovate across every sector of the economy. More

Eleven countries, including the U.S., have reported a total of 169 cases of severe acute hepatitis in healthy children aged 1 month to 16 years old, with the largest outbreak in the U.K.
At least 17 children have required liver transplants and one patient has died, according to the WHO.
The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the outbreak might be linked to adenovirus, though investigations are continuing.
In the past, adenoviruses have been rarely associated with hepatitis in children with weak immune systems but not in healthy ones.

Adenovirus (highly contagious virus). Image made from a transmission electron microscopy view.
Cavallini James | BSIP | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

An outbreak of severe hepatitis in healthy children that has caused liver failure in some kids might be linked to adenovirus infection, though further investigation is needed, World Health Organization officials said on Thursday.
Eleven countries, including the U.S., have reported at least 169 cases of severe acute hepatitis in children aged 1 month to 16 years old with the largest outbreak in the U.K, according to the latest WHO report. At least 17 children have required liver transplants and one patient has died.

Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver most commonly caused by viruses, but medications and toxins can also trigger the condition.
“What is particularly unusual is that the majority of these children were previously healthy,” Dr. Philippa Easterbrook, a WHO official who monitors hepatitis, said during a question and answer session livestreamed on the global health agency’s social media Thursday.
At least 74 of the children have tested positive for adenovirus, according to the WHO. Adenoviruses are common and usually cause respiratory illness but can also result in stomach pain, pink eye and bladder infections. The severe hepatitis outbreak in kids has coincided with increased transmission of adenovirus in countries such as the U.K., according to the WHO.
“This doesn’t at this stage prove that there’s a causal link to these cases, but it is a promising interesting early signal that is being looked at in more detail,” Easterbrook said.
Adenovirus has, in rare instances, been associated with hepatitis in children with weak immune systems, according to Dr. Richard Peabody, who leads WHO Europe’s high-threat pathogens team. However, adenovirus is not a known cause of hepatitis in healthy children, according to the WHO.

“This is sort of an unusual phenomena that we’re seeing and that’s why we’re sort of alerting parents and public health authorities about this,” Peabody said.
At least 20 of the children had Covid, with 19 of them testing positive for that virus as well as adenovirus, according WHO data. Peabody said it’s possible Covid also is playing a role in the hepatitis outbreak, though it’s not clear and more investigation is needed to determine if that’s the case.
U.K. officials first notified the WHO about an outbreak of severe acute hepatitis in children earlier this month. The most common symptoms have been liver inflammation, stomach pain, diarrhea, vomiting and jaundice, according to the WHO.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week issued a nationwide health alert after finding nine cases of hepatitis in children aged 1 to 6 years old in Alabama. They all had liver damage with some suffering liver failure, according to the CDC. The CDC also believes adenovirus may be the cause, though the public health agency said investigations are continuing.
Easterbrook said health officials have largely ruled out the hepatitis A, B, C, D and E viruses as a possible cause. Hepatitis viruses have not been detected in any of the reported cases, according to the WHO. Other viruses such as CMV and Epstein Barr also don’t appear to account for the outbreak, Easterbrook said. Parents of the children so far have not reported a common exposure to a drug, toxin, food or travel destination, she said.
The WHO has also largely ruled out Covid-19 vaccination as a possible cause because a majority of the children had not receive the shots, Easterbrook said.

CNBC Health & Science

Read CNBC’s latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

One ticket sold in Arizona matched all six numbers drawn Wednesday night.
The cash option — which most jackpot winners choose — is $283.3 million.
Here’s how much could go to taxes.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty Images

A single lottery ticket sold in Arizona is about to change someone’s life — after the IRS takes a piece of the windfall, of course.
Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing resulted in one ticket matching all six numbers drawn to land the $473.1 million jackpot. The amount was higher than originally anticipated, due to strong ticket sales.

More from Personal Finance:Here’s how to buy new work clothes on a budgetThese are the best and worst U.S. places to dieThe IRS has sent more than 78 million refunds
The advertised figure isn’t what the winner will end up with. Whether the prize is taken as an annuity of 30 payments over 29 years or as an immediate, reduced cash amount, taxes end up consuming a sizable bite out of the winnings.
For this jackpot, a required federal tax withholding of 24% would reduce the $283.3 million cash option — which most jackpot winners choose — by about $68 million.

However, the top federal rate is 37%, so more generally would be due at tax time. For illustration purposes: If the winner had no reduction in income — for example, significant charitable contributions from the winnings — another 13%, or $36.8 million, would be due to the IRS ($104.8 million in all).
There also will be Arizona state taxes imposed. The top effective tax rate is 2.98% for tax year 2022, which if applied to the lump sum would mean $8.4 million going to the state, according to the Arizona Lottery.
The winner will get 180 days to claim the prize.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

A new peer-reviewed study published Thursday in the journal Nature found global warming will drive 4,000 viruses to spread between mammals, including potentially between animals and humans, for the first time by 2070.
Bats are especially responsible for novel viral transmission because they fly.
It would cost $1 billion to properly identify and counteract viral spreading patterns.

Blaise Kadjo, a specialist in mammals and a professor at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny University, shows a species of bat in the researcg laboratary of the zoology and animal biology depertment at the University in Abidjan on February 4, 2021. – Scientists say that bats are a crucial part of the food chain, but are also a suspected source of viruses, including COVID-19, that have leapt the species barriers to humans. Hunting and human encroachment on their habitat has heightened the risk of transmission. (Photo by SIA KAMBOU / AFP) (Photo by SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images)
Sia Kambou | Afp | Getty Images

A new peer-reviewed study published Thursday in the journal Nature found global warming will drive 4,000 viruses to spread between mammals, including potentially between animals and humans, for the first time by 2070.
Global warming will push animals to move away from hotter climates, and that forced migration will result in species coming into contact for the first time, according to the study.

The Covid-19 pandemic was likely caused by the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the southeast Asian horseshoe bat to humans.
The additional 4,000 cross species viral transmissions between mammals does not mean there will be another 4,000 potential Covid-19 pandemics, Greg Albery, a postdoctoral Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in Berlin and a co-author of the study, told CNBC.
“But each one has the potential to influence animal health and maybe to then spill over into human populations,” Albery told CNBC. “Either way, it is likely to be very bad news for the health of the affected ecosystems.”
Bats are particularly likely to transmit viruses because they fly. Bats will account for almost 90% of the first encounters between novel species and most of those first encounters will be in southeast Asia, the report found.
But that’s not a reason to vilify bats.

“Bats are disproportionately responsible, but we’re trying to accentuate that this isn’t the thing to blame them for — and that punishing them (culling, trying to prevent migrations) is likely to only make matters worse by driving greater dispersal, greater transmission, and weaker health,” Albery said.
For the report, Albery and his co-author, Colin J. Carlson, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, used computer modeling to predict where species would likely overlap for the first time.
“We don’t know the baseline for novel species interactions, but we expect them to be extremely low when compared to those we’re seeing motivated by climate change,” Alberty told CNBC.
Those calculations show that tropical hotspots of novel virus transmission will overlap with human population centers in the Sahel, the Ethiopian highlands and the Rift Valley in Africa; as well as eastern China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines by 2070. Some European population centers may be in the transmission hotspots, too, the report found. (Albery declined to specify which ones.)
The report puts a fine point on a trend that scientists have predicted for some time.
“This is an interesting study that puts a quantitative estimate on what a number of scientists have been saying for years (me included): changing climate — along with other factors — will enhance opportunities for introduction, establishment, and spread of viruses into new geographic locations and new host species,” Matthew Aliota, a professor Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota, told CNBC. Aliota was not involved in the study at all.
“Unfortunately, we will continue to see new zoonotic disease events with increasing frequency and scope,” Aliota said. (Zoonotic diseases are those that are spread between animals and humans.)
While he agrees with the general conclusion of the study, modeling the future transmission of viruses is tricky business, said Daniel Bausch, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, an international organization dedicated to reducing tropical disease transmission. Bausch was not involved in the study at all.
“Human behavioral change (e.g. hunting of migrated animals) and land perturbations in response to climate change – for example urbanization and habitat changes such as highway and dam building – may impede mammal migrations, and limit mixing. There may be hot spots, but also cold spots—i.e. areas that become uninhabitable,” Bausch said.
It could cost a billion dollars to properly identify and counteract the spread of zoonotic viruses the report finds, and that research will be critical to preventing pandemics.
“Big picture, preparedness is the key and we need to invest in research, early detection, and surveillance systems,” Aliota told CNBC. “Studies like this can help better direct those efforts and it emphasizes the need to rethink our outlook from a human-focused view of zoonotic disease risk to an ecocentric view.” 
How humans respond to predictions is also critical. For example, Bausch noted, humans can avoid interaction with bats to a large extent.
“I would argue to date that response, not surveillance, has been our major impediment,” Bausch told CNBC. “We detected H1N1 influenza rapidly in 2009, arguably SARS CoV-2 early in 2019, certainly Omicron BA1 and BA2 variants early, but nevertheless failed to keep these pathogens from circulating globally. As much attention needs to be paid to response systems as surveillance and prediction.”

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, McDonald’s — the very symbol of Western capitalism — opened its first store in the Soviet Union. It was a big moment, and the restaurant drew large crowds.
More than 30 years later, amid pressure from U.S. consumers to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, McDonald’s last month announced it would be temporarily closing all 850 of its locations in Russia.

Starbucks, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola likewise announced their plans to pause business activity in Russia, and Yum Brands, which franchises about 1,000 KFC restaurants and 50 Pizza Hut locations in Russia, suspended all investment and restaurant development in the country. 
More than 750 companies have since curtailed operations in Russia.
McDonald’s has also temporarily shuttered its 108 locations in Ukraine for safety reasons. Russia and Ukraine together account for roughly 2% of McDonald’s global sales and less than 3% of its operating income.
There’s no telling when or if McDonald’s will resume its operations in Russia and Ukraine, but the company is taking a hit to its bottom line. The company announced during its first-quarter earnings that the closures cost McDonald’s $27 million in leases, supplier costs, and employee wages, and another $100 million in unsold inventory. Altogether, those expenses dragged its earnings down by 13 cents per share in the first quarter.
In the meantime, the fast-food chain has committed to continue paying its employees in both countries.

Watch the video to learn more about the impact of McDonald’s leaving Russia.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Ford’s non-site-dependent employees returned to offices earlier this month amid the company’s embrace of hybrid work models.
The automaker is also reviewing its manufacturing facilities, seeing if it can find ways to improve worker wellbeing, nutrition, and even natural light in the spaces.
“I really hope that we all embrace this as an opportunity to really rethink and reimagine the evolution of work,” says Ford Chief People and Employee Experience Officer Kiersten Robinson.

Ford Motor Company world headquarters, Dearborn, Michigan on January 19, 2021.
Aaron J. Thornton | Getty Images

After several setbacks and delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ford Motor Co. finally started to welcome its salaried workforce back to its offices earlier this month.
It also came alongside a significant shift in workplace policy from the company that helped establish the traditional five-day, 40-hour workweek as the norm: the start of its new hybrid work model where non-site-dependent employees could work flexibly between a Ford campus location and remote.

Ford perhaps had reason to believe many of its employees would look to return to the office once the plan rolled out. The company polled 56,000 global employees who were working remotely in June 2020 about their work preferences post-pandemic and 95% said they wanted a mix of remote and in-office work, while 5% said they wanted to be onsite.
Still, Ford Chief People and Employee Experience Officer Kiersten Robinson said during a CNBC Work virtual event on Wednesday that the early results “have been a little surprising.”
“When we opened our doors on April 4 to our employees to welcome them back into the workplace – those that wanted to come in – the numbers that actually have come back into work have been lower than we expected,” Robinson said.
While the company is “very early in the experience,” according to Robinson, Ford is still seeing signs among those that have come into work that they’re able to “do highly collaborative team-based brainstorming and strategic work together.”
Here are some of the key things Ford has observed since welcoming back workers.

Focus on auto manufacturing jobs

Given that Ford has many employees that have jobs that don’t allow for remote or hybrid work, Robinson said that the company has been “really clear that the nature of work informs where and how work gets done.”
“Our manufacturing plants, you can only do that work in the facility and so our focus in those locations is to make sure that the work environment is as conducive and inviting as possible, and what are some of the additional tools and amenities that we can provide,” she said.
That has led Ford to undergo an effort to examine how it can improve manufacturing facilities, looking at ways to improve worker wellbeing, nutrition, and even natural light in the space – “conditions that can really impact your work experience,” Robinson said.
For knowledge workers, Ford is asking departments to meet with their teams and create a plan around what they need to do in a 90-day period, asking questions about the key work tasks, and how and where would be the best ways to do that work.
“We’re measuring sentiment, we’re measuring the employee experience over those 90 days, but of course, we’ll be able to measure the output and whether or not employees feel as though with that agency and with that choice, they’re as productive as they need to be,” Robinson said.

Collecting data on new office habits

Robinson said that Ford has already revamped 33% of its facilities in southeast Michigan to “make them more conducive for collaborative hybrid work,” and that it has a roadmap to continue to do that in the coming years.
Ford is assuming that roughly 50% of its employees will be in the office on any given day, but Robinson said it will test that hypothesis more clearly over the coming months.
Ford confirmed a small workforce reduction on Wednesday when it reported earnings, a net loss of $3.1 billion in the first quarter, largely due the loss in value of a 12% stake in EV start-up Rivian Automotive. As it pivots to EVs, 580 U.S. salaried employees and agency workers, largely in engineering, were let go as part of the Ford+ turnaround plan.
The company has no plans to reduce the number of facilities it has, but rather make the spaces as conducive as possible for hybrid work, she said.
With workers now back in the office, Ford is keeping a closer eye on how the spaces are actually being used.
“We’ve got very clear data around traffic patterns, the days that are the most popular and we’re using sensors in many of our facilities to even measure what types of spaces are being used and for what purpose,” Robinson said.
“There is no perfect answer here, other than I don’t think we can go back to how we worked pre-pandemic,” she said. “I really hope that we all embrace this as an opportunity to really rethink and reimagine the evolution of work and to experiment and really invest in understanding employee feedback, employees’ sentiment and to use that to continue to refine and reshape what work looks like.” More