GM head office to stay in downtown Detroit, for now

General Motors, GM will keep its headquarters in its seven-building office tower complex in downtown Detroit in the United States, its CEO says.

Mary Barra, in an interview with The Associated Press, said the automaker’s main office will remain in the Renaissance Center, the centrepiece of the city’s skyline just across the Detroit River from Canada.

“Our headquarters will always be in Detroit, in the RenCen,” she said, using the name given to the complex by locals. “Right now the plan is for it to be at the Renaissance Centre. That’s our home,” she said.

Barra qualified her remarks, saying she cannot predict what will happen in five, 10 or 15 years.

She also said the company has to look at its space needs, now that many white-collar employees are staying at home much of the workweek on a hybrid home-and-office schedule.

The company takes up about 1 1/2 of the RenCen’s towers, which have seen little pedestrian traffic for years. Much of GM’s workforce, including product development and engineering, is north of the city at an updated 1950s technical centre in suburban Warren. After GM’s 2009 bankruptcy, the company considered moving the headquarters there.

“As we move to having more of a hybrid work structure, we have to look at what’s the right space,” Barra said.

GM is still evaluating whether the hybrid model is viable for those who can do their jobs remotely. Like many CEOs, Barra wonders if working from home will still allow for collaboration and for reinforcement of a corporate culture. “There are huge benefits to being in the office,” she said. ”I think we’ve got to make sure we have the right balance of collaboration and interaction, to make sure that two, three, four, five years from now, we still are maintaining the culture that we think is so important for the company,” she said.

Whether hybrid work is permanent, she said, depends on the company and industry. At GM, people have gotten used to the flexibility of working from home. Although workers don’t need to be at the office every day at the same time, teams of workers do need time together, she said.

AP