Goldman Sachs wants office employees 5 days a week and other companies can follow suit

Goldman Sachs requires employees to return to the office 5 days a week, according to luckwho published an interview with David Solomon, CEO of the investment firm, last week.

It comes five weeks after a failed attempt to bring Goldman Sachs employees back to the company’s New York headquarters. When the company reopened its office on February 1, after being closed for a month due to the spread of the highly contagious Covid omicron variant, only about half of Goldman’s 10,000 employees showed up at its headquarters, Fortune. Reports. Goldman Sachs declined to comment further with CNBC Make It on plans to return to the office.

Solomon has expressed an aversion to remote work, although other high-profile companies — Citigroup, Meta, UBS and Twitter — have embraced flexibility and allow employees to work from home on a regular basis. During last year’s Mali conference, Solomon It’s called remote work “A deviation” he wanted to correct “as quickly as possible”.

He added, “I think a company like ours is an innovative and collaborative professional training culture, which is not ideal for us and is nothing new normal.”

as Covid cases and hospitalizations Will it continue to decline across the US, will we see other companies demanding workers return to their desks full-time, or will hybrid devices prevail? CNBC Make It spoke with business and health experts about what workers can expect to see with plans to return to the office in the coming months.

More than 90% of employers plan to adopt a hybrid model this year, according to Recent Research From tech consulting firm Gartner — but researchers expect many high-profile companies to “change course” in the coming months, requiring employees to return to the office full time, citing high turnover rates and a perceived loss of organizational culture.

Two years into the pandemic, more executives are striving to return to their offices on a consistent schedule. future forumThe Slack Research Consortium interviewed nearly 11,000 knowledge workers in the United States, France and other countries in November and found that 42% of executives work from the office 3-4 days a week compared to 30% of non-executives. Furthermore, 44% of remote executives said they would prefer working from the office every day, while only 17% of employees said the same.

Now that one of the prominent CEOs – Solomon – has announced his intentions to return fully to the position, however, more companies can be inspired to follow his lead.

“Most companies monitor what others are doing before committing to their RTO plans,” says Peter Capelli, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. “No one wants to take the first step – but now that I’ve seen a big, well-known company say it’s time to get back in the office, I think we’ll see more stampedes of others doing the same.”

People with underlying health conditions who live with young children who are not immunized or others at risk of becoming seriously ill should consider wearing n95 mask in their office to protect them from direct exposure to the virus, she adds.

Gershon also recommends that everyone wear a mask in crowded places and wash their hands throughout the day as well, but other than that, there’s no need to take extra sanitary precautions for now.

It is important to note that Covid appears to be the least of employees’ concerns about returning to the office. According to new findings from Pew Research Center61% of people who work from home do so because they want to, even if their office is open. lack of people He says Covid is the main reason they want to work from home (42% now vs 57% in 2020).

promotion of executives Various incentives To return to the office including improving collaboration, communication and inter-team communication. But Capelli says the real reason companies are paying full return is much simpler: Hybrid work is still new, and it’s easier for companies to stick with what they know.

“We have learned to work remotely either partially or all the time while on the move during this crisis,” Capelli says. “There are a lot of moving parts that are hard to manage as well, without being able to predict with complete confidence the consequences: what if employees don’t agree on the days ahead, or how you measure the performance of people far away versus in the office, avoiding proximity bias? “

He adds that companies may consider moving to remote work or in the office full time to avoid such headaches. “Transitioning to a hybrid workforce is very complicated to figure out, and no one knows exactly how well it will work in an organization because it is still too new for most employers,” Capelli says.

People who work from home He said It has helped them maintain a better work-life balance, manage childcare responsibilities and increase their productivity, among other benefits. But such praise may not be enough to stop companies from paying to go back to the office, Capelli notes: “Just because employees want something, doesn’t always mean they get it.”

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