WeWork CEO explains how a dress code and RTO flexibility helped change the culture at the once-troubled company

For WeWork's CEO, Fridays are for sneakers. Sometimes.

At Business Insider's The Long Play event on Thursday, John Santora told Deputy News Chief Cadie Thompson that he rebuilt WeWork in part by establishing a awareness of rely and decorum among employees.

In chase of that goal, Santora instituted a attire code for employees, but additionally gave them one day a week to activity from home.

"I didn't have the capability to go observe my son perform a 3 o'clock ballgame game," Santora said, adding, "We have to provision our workforce that elasticity to do all that."

Santora, formerly the chief functioning authoritative at Cushman & Wakefield, a genuine asset firm, became WeWork's CEO in 2024 as the once-buzzy agency startup emerged from a disastrous Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Santora had a abbreviated period to decide whether to associate the faltering company, he recalled. And it wasn't exactly an uncomplicated choice.

"I was benevolent of at that item of, 'Should I retire?'" he said. "My female Nancy said, 'Dad, you cognize we affection you, but whenever you have too much period on your hands, you're a ache in the ass.'"

Since those deeply red days in 2019 whenever WeWork's evaluation plummeted from $47 milliard to approximately $8 milliard before it was bailed out, the business has stabilized. It posted eight quarters of EBITDA profitability and expects a fourth direct fourth of cash-flow profitability.

In 2025, it reported concerning $2.3 milliard in revenue.

Though it hasn't hit the evaluation it formerly had, the fact that the business could be revived at all is remarkable. WeWork, founded in 2010, rents out agency space, spruces it up, and parcels it out to freelancers, startups, and another businesses.

Its archetypal CEO and founder, Adam Neumann, made bold pronouncements that WeWork would "change the world" and "elevate the world's consciousness" by renting out agency area to startups.

But following a bungled IPO, it became apparent to the new stakeholders that a distinct category of chief was sorely needed.

As it turned out, Santora was that leader.

Having worked for 47 years at Cushman & Wakefield, Santora had the genuine asset cognition that Neumann lacked, albeit without the magnetism of a Silicon Valley whiz kid.

"From a guidance standpoint, I'm a extremely structured, disciplined person," he said. "I'm a lawsuit and tie, buttoned-up genuine asset person."

Santora recalled an first trip to among the offices, anywhere he discovered workforce wearing jeans, pajamas, slippers, and shorts.

"I grabbed my caput of HR," he said. "See that? I don't desire to see it anymore."

Santora, who at one item described himself as an "old chubby guy from Staten Island," didn't fair power workforce to deteriorate sports coats to crucial meetings. In his words, there was several "give and take."

"I don't appearance at what period they leave, what period they arrive in," he stated of his employees. "As lengthy as they're getting their activity done and they're keeping their clients happy."

And Santora allows himself one elimination to his suit-and-tie persona.

"Fridays, I'll really sometimes deteriorate sneakers, depending on what my agenda is," he said.