Don’t Live in ‘Pity City,’ Miller Knoll CEO Tells Employees Who Want Money

A video of CEO Andi Owen encouraging staff to cease “thinking about what you’re going to do if you don’t get a bonus” was allegedly taken “out of context,” according to MillerKnoll.

Miller Knoll CEO Encourage the Employees

In a town hall in March that has since gone viral online, the CEO of a large office furniture company slammed staff members, asking them to “leave pity city” when they inquired about bonuses at a trying time for the business and the sector as a whole.

Andi Owen, the CEO and president of MillerKnoll, responded to enquiries about how staff members could remain motivated in the absence of incentive assurances in the video.

She called some of the enquiries “not very kind.” Beginning quietly, Owen instructed staff to concentrate on things they could control, such as providing excellent customer service and treating one another with respect.

But, Owen’s tone quickly shifted as she grew obviously irritated and began gesturing with her hand.

Don’t enquire as to “What will happen if we don’t receive a bonus?” It was her. “Bring the $26 million, damn it.

Spend your time and energy focusing on the $26 million we require rather than on what you’ll do if you don’t receive a bonus.

Alright? Can you promise me something about that? She added quietly, “I would appreciate that,” before whispering it again. (The $26 million is a private measurement that the business declined to make public.)

She followed by citing some counsel from a former boss.

“You may visit pity city, but you can’t live there,” an old boss once told me. So, get out of that pitiful city. She urged everyone to complete the task before wishing them a happy day.

The statement, which came at the conclusion of a 75-minute town hall where Owen discussed industry developments, new product releases, brand marketing initiatives, etc., infuriated some workers, and Owen afterwards issued a letter to associates and met with business officials as a result.

The fiscal year of MillerKnoll has not yet concluded, and Owen’s bonus has not yet been decided.

Yet, the video quickly went viral online, inciting outrage among the general population. The film, according to a corporate official, does not capture the entire context of the discussion, which she described as generally pleasant.

A spokesman for MillerKnoll, Kris Marubio, told Motherboard that Andi “fervently believes in this team and everything we can do together, and will not be dissuaded by a 90-second footage taken out of context and put on social media.”

Since the pandemic, MillerKnoll, a company that produces some of the most well-known chairs in the nation, such as the Aeron, Mirra, and Eames lounge chairs, has struggled with a decline in demand as businesses started to more firmly embrace the hybrid work model, making them less likely to spend hundreds of dollars on brand-new, expensive office chairs.

In a March earnings call, Owen stated that “traditional workplace usage and layouts are not as significant as they previously were.”

Businesses that shrunk the size of their offices inundated the secondary market with less expensive, used goods, which only served to lower demand.

MillerKnoll recently described this as “a period of disruption,” which prompted Herman Miller to purchase Knoll, one of its main rivals, in 2021 for $1.8 billion and create a new company called MillerKnoll in order to better handle the changes brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic.

Due to the purchase, the former CEO of Knoll resigned, giving Owen, the former CEO of Herman Miller, control over the newly established furniture behemoth.

The company announced earlier this month that it would close a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin and lay off 162 workers.

Since then, Owen has tried to cut costs in a number of ways as the share price fell, and it has also shifted its focus to “more hybrid, collaborative work environments” and online sales.

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