Wayfair CEO: Employees need to work longer hours

FILE - This April 17, 2018 file photo shows the Wayfair website on a computer in New York. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)

New York — Wayfair’s CEO has an end-of-year message for employees of the online furniture company: Don’t shy away from doing more work and blending your work with your life.

“Winning requires hard work. I believe that most of us, being ambitious individuals, find fulfillment in the joy of seeing our efforts materialize into tangible results,” CEO Niraj Shah said in a note to employees earlier this month celebrating the company’s recent success, and which a company spokesperson confirmed to CNN. “Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from. There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success.”

Shah also encouraged Wayfair employees to think of the company money they spend as their own and negotiate prices. As of December 2022, Wayfair had around 15,000 employees, according to its most recent filing.

“Would you spend money on that, would you spend that much money for that thing, does that price seem reasonable, and lastly — have you negotiated the price?” he said in an email to Wayfair employees earlier this month. The note was first obtained by Business Insider.

Wayfair’s business surged early in the pandemic as home bound shoppers ordered furniture, desks and home goods online.

But the company struggled beginning in 2022 as people returned to shopping in person and shifted their spending from physical goods to experiences.

In 2022, Wayfair announced it was cutting 5 per cent of its workforce.

But Shah told employees in his email that the company is back to being profitable.

“Together we can win much faster than we are winning now if we all row in this direction together,” he said. “Let’s be aggressive, pragmatic, frugal, agile, customer oriented, and smart.”

Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics, told CNN’s Richard Quest in an interview Thursday that “if Wayfair wants to run a business where people work 80 hours a week, he’s going to have to put up their salaries by 50 per cent to pay them for it.”

“I don’t see this as being successful for the typical employee,” Bloom said, noting that the jobs market is strong and employees have options.

A company spokesperson was not immediately available to respond to CNN’s questions about pay.