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JPMorgan is planning to order staff back to the office full-time, upping requirements for many of the bank’s 300,000 global employees from three days to five days a week.
According to a Bloomberg report, 60% of its workforce currently work on-site five days a week, including managing directors, traders, and retail branch workers, following rules introduced in April 2023.
However, such a mandate would in theory bring tens of thousands of JPMorgan staff back to the office more frequently, ending their remote work flexibility. It would also make the bank the latest major financial institution to return to its pre-pandemic in-office policy.
JPMorgan to call all employees back to the office full-time?
Bloomberg revealed the planned changes in a report published Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter—but caveated that the new mandate is yet to be publicly confirmed and could still change.
A spokesperson for JPMorgan declined Bloomberg’s request for comment but clarified to Business Insider roughly 70% of the bank's global workforce already work in the office or on-site five days a week.
Every other staff member, they said, is already back in-office either three or four days a week.
The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has previously been outspoken about working from home. In September, the executive criticized the federal government’s stance on remote work.
"I can't believe, when I come down here, the empty buildings. The people who work for you not going to the office," Dimon told the Atlantic. “That bothers me. I don't allow that.”
The CEO said if it were up to him, he would “make Washington, DC go back to work.”
JPMorgan was one of the earliest firms to call staff back to the office post-pandemic. In July 2021, the bank began calling staff back to the office on a rolling basis, before upping requirements over the subsequent years.
A backdrop of return-to-office (RTO) mandates
The possible return-to-office order for JPMorgan’s staff comes amid a backdrop of major organizations calling staff back to the office more frequently.
In some cases, employers have switched from a remote-first model to expecting staff in-office for several days each week or month; while others have been more aggressive, such as Amazon, AT&T, and Goldman Sachs, calling some or all staff back to the office full-time.
Amazon’s controversial mandate to order staff back to the office five days per week came into effect on Monday, January 6.
Those who have implemented stricter in-office requirements have struggled against resistance from employees who continue to demand flexibility and autonomy over when, where, and how they work.
For example, Amazon CEO Andy Jass asserted that more in-office work would “strengthen our culture and teams,” employees responded with a barrage of criticism, including open letters and anonymous surveys, decrying the policy change.
Should JPMorgan expect pushback on a return-office order?
When calling staff back to the office more frequently, there are also practical issues to contend with.
Amazon, for example, has been forced to delay the return for thousands of staff due to insufficient office capacity at some locations. A similar issue faced Starling Bank, whose HR team ceded some office locations in the UK “may not be able to accommodate” a planned increase to 10 in-office working days per month.
JPMorgan, meanwhile, is currently in the process of building a 60-story office in New York it hopes will accommodate up to 14,000 workers. Dimon’s consistent stance on remote flexibility is another factor that may work in favor of JPMorgan if such a mandate is enacted.
While the bank has been happy to stagger the return-to-office for its staff, his position on remote work, as indicated above, has been clear.
Other employers to enact stricter in-office policies do not share the same record. At Salesforce, for example, select teams including sales units were recently called back to the office from the beginning of October 2024. At a company event in 2022, CEO Mark Benioff stated, “Office mandates are never going to work.”
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Similarly, a change in approach at Dell have left staff frustrated. In 2021, CEO Michael Dell told CRN that remote working is “absolutely here to stay.” The executive also gave the example of two employers, one with in-office mandates and another with flexibility. “Which company do you think is a more attractive place to work? This is not really a hard test,” he said. In September 2024, Dell’s sales staff were ordered to work from the office five days a week.
Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn, meanwhile, said his company dodged backlash and attrition after calling staff back into the office by consistently communicating to staff that remote working was never a long-term policy and at some stage, all would be expected to return to the office. “This was not a surprise for anybody," he explained on the Verge's 'Decoder' podcast.
Other employers embrace flexibility
Not all employers share Dimon’s interest in getting employees back to the office full-time.
Richard Teng, CEO of crypto giant Binance, shared a blog post on Monday in which he said that ‘rigid’ in-office models such as Amazon’s may be costing them gains in recruitment, efficiency, and innovation.
“Remote-first work demands a certain type of talent: creative thinkers, self-motivated individuals, and those who thrive on autonomy. It also requires organizations to embrace a culture of trust and accountability,” he wrote. “Not every company, or every employee, is prepared for this level of independence but the rewards are immense: access to a global talent pool, unparalleled flexibility, and the ability to move at the speed of innovation.”
According to the post, Binance has a workforce of over 5,000 employees in nearly 100 countries, all of whom are remote-first. “Workforces are also becoming more global,” Teng noted. “The best talent can come from anywhere, and companies that wish to attract and retain this talent must offer flexibility.”
Similarly, Christy Lake, CPO of SaaS firm Twilio, told HR Grapevine in October that changes in in-office requirements can cause issues for staff. “The swirl and policy reversals with remote, hybrid and RTO can cause real anxiety among employees,” she said. “Being remote-first allows us to attract and retain top talent around the world. It also pushes us to continuously find ways to maintain connection and relationships across a distributed workforce, and provide the flexibility that employees want.”
