Jamie Dimon is concerned by federal staff not working of their D.C. places of work 5 days every week

Whereas talking on stage concerning the state of politics in America at The Atlantic Pageant within the nation’s capital, Dimon mentioned he’d “make Washington, D.C. go back to work.”

“I can’t believe, when I come down here, the empty buildings. The people who work for you not going to the office,” Dimon added. “That bothers me. I don’t allow that at JP[Morgan].” 

“Well, we know what he would do on day one as president,” Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic responded.

“Yeah, you’re all going back to work,” Dimon joked.

In actuality, JPMorgan staff and D.C. federal employees have been subjected to related return-to-office mandates currently. 

At present, employees at most businesses should be within the workplace at the least three days every week.

In accordance with a report to Congress from the Workplace of Administration and Funds final month, solely about half of federal staff even have the choice to work remotely—the opposite half are already working completely in particular person.

Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, who has repeatedly known as out the federal government’s lax RTO, has even ordered her personal metropolis employees to return to the workplace 4 days every week.

Likewise, JPMorgan employees are anticipated to work from the workplace three days every week—apart from these in management roles and in sure divisions like buying and selling, who’re required to work from their cubicles full time.

Fortune has reached out to Mayor Bowser’s workplace. JPMorgan declined to remark. 

The finance business isn’t an enormous fan of working from dwelling

It’s hardly shocking that Dimon thinks D.C.’s federal employees must be topic to stricter RTO mandates. The CEO—and the finance business, for that matter—have been among the many loudest opposers of distant working.

After over a 12 months out and in of lockdowns, JPMorgan was one of many first main employers to begin ushering its staff “back regularly” to their desks in June 2021. 

Since then, the funding financial institution has taken an more and more strict stance towards working from dwelling together with utilizing badge swipe information to implement in-office quotas. 

In the meantime, its CEO Dimon has constantly berated distant working for suppressing “spontaneous idea generation” and being incompatible with managing a group. 

“I completely understand why someone doesn’t want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it,” he instructed The Economist. “Doesn’t mean they have to have a job here either.”

Likewise, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon famously referred to distant working as an “aberration,” and has insisted staff return to in-person work full-time.

In the meantime Citigroup, HSBC and Barclays have all ramped up their in workplace necessities and made it tricker for Wall Road to dial in from dwelling—partly due to new Finra guidelines. 

Even banking giants which promised to maintain versatile working ceaselessly, together with Santander and Nationwide, are backtracking and launching RTO mandates.

Dimon and D.C.’s federal workplace have the identical challenge: RTO dodgers 

If D.C.’s federal workplace buildings are as “empty” as Dimon says, regardless of the federal government’s in-office mandate, then it factors to 1 factor: RTO dodgers—and it’s a conundrum Dimon, the federal government, and lots of CEOs share.

In London, employers are asking workers to come back in to the workplace for 3.1 days every week on common—staff are literally displaying up solely 2.7 days.

Likewise, in New York employees are being requested to work from the workplace for 3.7 days of the week—however are solely displaying up for 3.1 days.

The report from the assume tank Centre for Cities highlighted that this sample is adopted in most main international cities, together with Toronto, Singapore and Sydney. 

To that finish, Dimon himself has needed to ship out quite a few exasperated reminders to JPMorgan’s workforce about his personal firm’s in-office coverage, whereas threatening “corrective action” for employees who have been nonetheless failing to adjust to the mandate some years after it was introduced.