Small banks demand full-time office work more than bigger peers

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have been leading the charge to get employees into the office more often, but it’s their smaller industry peers who are more likely to demand full-time on-site work.

While just 4% of banks with 5,000 or more employees require full-time office attendance, nearly a third of the smallest banks in the cohort demand it, according to a survey of 137 US banks employing 4.4 million people from Scoop Technologies Inc., which advises firms on flex-work policy. The policy differences could be influencing where bankers want to work: The share of larger banks’ new employees that are coming from smaller banks has increased to 26.8% this year, up from 22.6% in 2021, according to job-market data tracker Revelio Labs.

Smaller Banks More Likely to Require Full-Time Office Work

Bigger financial firms mostly use hybrid-work arrangements

Banks with fewer employees are also more likely to let employees chose if they come into an office at all, while the vast majority of bigger banks use some type of hybrid arrangement, where workers are on-site a few days a week. Of the 66 banks that were added to Scoop’s index over the past year, none of them said they required full-time office attendance. The data contrasts with the much-publicized comments from the leaders of big banks like Jamie Dimon, who has said remote work “doesn’t work.”

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