Data reveal that the U.S. return-to-office rate still struggles to cross significant thresholds, notably on Fridays. The world’s largest investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, which has already said it wants staff in the office five days a week, is encouraging them once more to follow through.
More than three years after office workers were ordered home from work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, low in-person office attendance is still a concern at commercial premises.
Continuously Encouraging Employees
According to Jacqueline Arthur, the company’s global head of human capital management, “we have continued to encourage employees to work in the office five days a week since we communicated our approach for returning to the office.” “While there is flexibility when needed, we are simply reminding our employees of our existing policy, which is broadly in line with other leading firms in the industry.”
With its summer interns having left and many employees opting to work remotely in order to get a head start on the weekend, the lower Manhattan headquarters of Goldman Sachs has been described as being “totally dead” on Fridays, according to a previous report by the New York Post, which cited people familiar with the situation.
A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs informed CoStar News that the company does not have a work-from-home policy for summer Fridays and would not provide any other information. The spokesman likewise declined to comment on the company’s current office occupancy percentage and whether or not workers would face consequences for not reporting to work full-time.
Tightening Regulations
According to Chairman and Chief Executive David Solomon, prior to the pandemic, around 75% of Goldman Sachs workers worked in the office on any given day of the week. By the time the pandemic ended, the percentage had risen to about 65%. Solomon stated at the time that the majority of the company’s workforce—those in their 20s—worked five days a week in the office, while those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s had “more flexibility.”
As more businesses have tightened their return-to-office rules and urged employees to come in at least some days of the week, including other financial services behemoths like JPMorgan Chase and internet titans like Amazon, Google, and Meta, Goldman Sachs has issued a reminder to its staff.
The managing directors of JPMorgan are required to work remotely five days a week. JPMorgan and rival Citigroup have been monitoring attendance and requesting managers to put the requirements of working at least three days a week in the office into practise for many employees. Citigroup staffers were recently warned they might face consequences for breaking attendance policies, according to Bloomberg.
According to landlords, financial services companies have been among the most active office leasing tenants in major U.S. markets since they typically have greater return-to-office rates than industries like tech.
