- Goldman Sachs is ramping up efforts to make staff return to the office five days a week.
- Companies are cracking down on their office mandates, much to the ire of staff used to working from home.
Goldman Sachs is pushing employees to return to the office full-time after senior managers grew frustrated by some staff who've failed to follow its five-day-a-week policy, Bloomberg reported.
"While there is flexibility when needed, we are simply reminding our employees of our existing policy," Goldman Sachs HR chief Jacqueline Arthur told the publication. "We have continued to encourage employees to work in the office five days a week."
Insider has approached Goldman Sachs for comment on what capacity its offices are at and whether the RTO police affects its offices globally.
Other companies across the US are also cracking down on their return-to-office policies, much to the ire of their workers.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Zoom said earlier this month that employees living within 50 miles of one of its offices must work there at least two days a week. The video-calling company, one of the darlings of the pandemic, helped businesses across the world shift to remote work as offices were forced to shut. Speaking about the return to office, CEO Eric Yuan told employees earlier this month that relying on video calls prevented employees from building trust and limited their innovation.
Meta first informed employees of its RTO efforts in June, saying that from September 5, people who were hired to work in an office should return for at least part of the week. It tightened the policy in August, saying managers would follow up with workers each month and that they could be disciplined or even fired if they repeatedly failed to show up to the office. The mandate aims to help workers "foster healthy relationships and strong collaboration," the company told workers in an email.
Amazon is also enforcing a strict mandate for its workers. Employees have been told they need to attend their teams' "hub" offices, rather than just the Amazon office closest to where they live, and the company said that those who refuse to relocate will either have to find a new job internally within 60 days or leave the company through a "voluntary resignation." Amazon managers told Insider they'd been directed to only give exceptions in extremely rare cases, despite workers urging leadership to let them work remotely.
Businesses urging workers to return say that in-person working cultivates a more open company culture and creates more opportunities for collaboration. Some research has found that, on average, people are more at least somewhat more productive when working in the office.
This finding varies a lot between people, and some employees are more productive when working from home. The rise in remote work during the pandemic introduced many people to the concept for the first time, and gave them a taste of working patterns that some of them are unwilling to give up. Working from home has enabled people to spend less money and time commuting, adapt their hours around caring responsibilities, and in some cases, improve their work-life balance.