Recently, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon ended “summer Fridays,” an understanding that employees are permitted to end their work week early on Fridays during the summer months. The Wall Street firm has also reaffirmed its commitment to having employees at the office five days a week instead of a remote or hybrid schedule.
Jacqueline Arthur, head of Human Resources at Goldman Sachs, stated there is flexibility with remote work capabilities under certain circumstances, but overall, employees need to be in regular attendance at the office. “While there is flexibility when needed, we are simply reminding our employees of our existing policy,” she said. “We have continued to encourage employees to work in the office five days a week.”
Reportedly, the Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City is “totally dead” on Fridays after interns have packed up for the summer and full-time employees choose to work remotely ahead of the weekend. Employees at the firm have not received the news well, particularly when it comes so close to Labor Day weekend.
“I think David’s really missing (another) trick if he thinks sending out that five-day note at this point will gain friends,” said one employee who claims he will not be following the new guidelines from the Wall Street giant. Others have indicated that with an already low morale at the firm, this would only be a further detriment to employee relations.
It is understandable for corporations and banks to have an interest in their employees being in the office full-time for reasons of productivity and the expensive investment in office real estate. However, business legend and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary provided an angle from the perspective of employees around the country who are pushing back on these return-to-office policies.
The businessman pointed out that far more people than anticipated are sticking to the remote work they have become comfortable with since the pandemic. O’Leary said, “I want to make a point here about the economy that’s changed because I live and breathe it every day with our portfolio of companies. And getting the data is what’s interesting to me. We found out now, we’ve made the assumption two years ago that 15% wouldn’t return. We’re wrong. It’s 40.”
O’Leary suggested that prospective employees will begin to demand remote work as a feature of jobs they are looking for. Therefore, companies would theoretically need to include remote work in their job offerings to compete for the best talent. The Shark Tank star also spoke about the state of urban America, where lawlessness and rampant crime make it difficult to justify long commutes.
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“When we went out for financial services, people in our operating company, the best talent, told us, If I have to come into an office and sit in a cubicle and drive for 45 minutes each day into a war-torn city like San Francisco, which we were trying to hire in, I’m not doing it,” he said. “I don’t want to get shot on my way to work. Safety in large cities like Chicago, San Francisco, you know, some parts of New York City, L.A. these days, nobody wants to work in these places. They’re war zones. So, they want to work where they get their jobs done.”
Image Credit: 2211473abhijithsaravanan, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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