Ford CEO Jim Farley blasts ‘absenteeism’, warns he HAS to cut back

Ford chief executive Jim Farley has criticized “absenteeism” after his company posted shocking annual profits, as he warned the iconic automaker will be forced to make urgent cuts to recover.

The auto company fell well short of the mark when fourth-quarter returns came in Thursday, where it missed its profit target for the year by as much as $2 billion.

Following the dismal results, Farley listed a number of factors that have led to the decline, blaming a lack of efficiency and rising ‘absenteeism’.

“We have to change our cost profile,” he said. CNBCin an interview that came after a call with analysts in which he reviewed the company’s failed bottom line.

We know what we have to pursue. I’d love to give you all the metrics and all the specific gaps that we see.

“But you know, whether it’s absenteeism, the number of sequencing centers, the number of wiring harnesses we have, we know what it is.”

The business leader’s call to action comes as a surge in work-from-home has rocked numerous industries in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Ford reported 2022 adjusted earnings of $10.4 billion, despite telling analysts it expected to earn between $11.5 billion and $12.5 billion just three months earlier.

The company also produced 100,000 fewer vehicles than it expected during the time period, while supply chain issues and semiconductor chip shortages pushed costs $1 billion more than planned.

Faced with mounting issues, which also included several recalls and problematic new vehicle launches that sent warranty costs through the roof, Farley was forced to ask, “What went wrong?”

“We have a lot of complexity customer-facing and also within our company,” he said.

“And we can reduce the complexity facing the customer as we have, but it takes time to reduce that to the parts on the line, to the manufacturing line.

“It just takes time to figure that out and that’s what we’ll do.”

Despite mass layoffs in various industries, including the technology field, Farley said he did not believe mass layoffs were the answer.

“There are things we could do in the short term, but I don’t want to just make the cuts without redesigning the job,” he said.

‘This has to be sustainable and this is how we are thinking about it today.’

Farley’s condemnation of office “absenteeism” comes amid several business leaders pointing to plummeting standards in the workplace and awakening the right of young employees that have hurt their businesses.

A survey conducted in New York last November found that young workers had record salary expectations.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the lowest median annual wage workers were willing to accept from a new employer was $73,667.

When the bank began conducting the survey in 2014, the expectation was for less than $55,000, which would be around $68,000 today taking inflation into account.

At last month’s Davos gathering of industry titans, Jane Fraser, the head of Wall Street banking giant Citigroup, warned that work-from-home slackers will now be brought back to the office to be trained to work from home. get in shape.

“If they’re not being productive, we bring them back to the office or site and give them the training they need until they’re productive again,” Fraser said.

Several Wall Street bosses expressed frustration at the summit that staff have continued to be away from the workplace since the pandemic.

Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, referred to the practice when speaking at the Bloomberg event.

He said: ‘Remote work hasn’t worked.’

And on Thursday, Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus slammed the current generation for prioritizing “wake-up” issues over profit.

The 93-year-old billionaire said he was dismayed to see the world’s business leaders gathering in Davos this year supporting investment in issues that “don’t reach the bottom line.”

“I really don’t understand the new leadership,” he said on Fox Business Network.

‘We need new leaders who are thinking about shareholders and their employees. I think nowadays it’s all about awakening, diversity, things that don’t quite get to the bottom of it.

“They want to work three days a week,” he said, pointing out that lazy modern office workers have a right while they expect to work short hours.

Just as Farley pointed the finger at poor labor practices for hurting company productivity, Marcus has previously said that his successful retail company would have suffered under modern company culture.

Criticizing falling standards, he blamed HR executives, government bureaucrats, regulators, socialists, Harvard grads, MBAs, Harvard MBAs, lawyers, accountants, Joe Biden, media and “people wake up”.