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Keen observers of the investment banking sector may recognize a familiar story in JPMorgan’s latest move on workload monitoring.
The bank is leaning further into data analysis at a time when expectations around employee well-being are colliding with the financial sector's long-established culture of 'grind' and 'hustle', call it what you will.
The banking and investment firm is using technology to more closely monitor junior bankers’ hours after introducing a cap on how long those on the bottom rung should work.
In a sector where long hours have traditionally been self-reported and, at times, quietly expected, the move toward more measurable oversight is part of an ongoing debate about whether limits on working hours reflect reality.
The bank is using tech to see whether juniors’ hours really match up with their self-reported timesheets.
Workload monitoring meets cultural reality
The intervention comes after sustained scrutiny of working conditions across investment banking, where extreme hours have drawn attention for the wrong reasons.
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It is the latest move by JPMorgan to try and rein in junior banker workloads as scrutiny of brutal hours has drawn fresh criticism following the deaths of associates at both Bank of America and Jefferies in recent years.
Such scrutiny has already driven structural changes, most notably the introduction of an 80-hour weekly cap and additional oversight roles, in an attempt to formalize boundaries that were previously inconsistently applied.
Extra resourcing has also been positioned as part of the solution, with new hires used to absorb workload pressure rather than simply redistribute it.
The bank has hired hundreds of new juniors outside of its regular graduate recruitment programme in a bid to alleviate extreme hours as deal activity intensifies.
But the introduction of monitoring technology suggests that one policy alone has not resolved the issue. Instead, the bank is moving toward a model where behavior is observable and, crucially, comparable.
Much like the weekly screen time summaries on a smartphone, the tool is more about awareness than enforcement, JPMorgan told the FT.
“It’s designed to support transparency, well-being, and encourage open conversations about workload.”
Positioning the tool as awareness rather than enforcement means striking a careful balance between surveillance and support. Nonetheless, the mechanics of the pilot point to a level of oversight that goes beyond passive reporting.
The bank will monitor activities like key strokes and video calls in the pilot scheme and plans to roll the idea out further across the organization.
Technology alone may not cut hours
For all the emphasis on monitoring and policy, skepticism remains embedded within the workforce itself. Senior and junior investment bankers remain doubtful that long hours will reduce even as AI becomes more embedded in the sector and takes on a lot of the grunt work.
The normalization of long hours is not always tied to workload volume alone. Cultural expectations and management behaviors continue to play a part in shaping how time is spent.
“A huge part of the hours are artificially created,” Vitoria Okuyama, a former analyst who spent three years at Citigroup until last July told FN.
Trying to be the last one in the office in a bid to look dedicated and hardworking is familiar office behavior, while some managers even encourage pulling an ‘all nighter’ and frame it as teamwork.
“Seniors create fake urgency and have juniors stay until 4am to finish a pitchbook for a meeting that isn’t even scheduled yet,” added Okuyama. “You’ll spend hours building a page and a senior will change their mind and delete it the next morning.”
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That disconnect between policy and real world implementation is where JPMorgan’s approach faces its biggest test. Monitoring tools may highlight bad practice, but they do not automatically resolve the behaviors that create it.
Leadership appears aware that change will be gradual rather than immediate. The bank has signalled a willingness to adjust its approach as it navigates the complexity of changing long-established norms.
Filippo Gori, JPMorgan’s co-head of global banking, said it had an ‘opportunity to take a lead and try and change’ the way junior investment bankers work.”
Expectations have been clearly articulated, at least at a policy level, with an acknowledgment that breaches require a structural response.
“There is an expectation that people should not work more than 80 hours a week. If that is the expectation and it’s being broken, then we need to hire more analysts,” he added.
Even so, leadership recognizes that transformation is far from complete, and says it is invested in the long haul.
“It’s a journey and there’s a lot to do - it’s not yet at the endgame. We have various policies and we will try various iterations of them to help bring down the number of hours that our junior bankers work.”
Technology may be able to generate meaningful data, but it cannot recalibrate habits that have been built over decades and bring about meaningful change on its own. That comes down to people leadership and cultural change.
