Morgan Stanley CEO: "80% of hours worked will be in an office"

15 July 2021

2 minute read

Morgan Stanley CEO: "80% of hours worked will be in an office"

It's U.S. investment bank results week and bank CEOs are busy affirming their commitments to getting staff back in the office.

Banking analyst Mike Mayo asked Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman today to elaborate on his previous comments about the need for all employees to return to the office by Labor Day, including Gorman's suggestions that, “If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office," and, "If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York."

Gorman said his comments had been taken out of context, but was unrepentant on his push for employees to return. "– I fundamentally believe the way you and I and others in this room have developed our careers is by mentoring and watching...those coming before us," said Gorman. "I don’t believe you can do that sitting at home yourself."

However, Gorman said that he also appreciates that working from home can be useful in some circumstances and on a time-limited basis. "We will be flexible when flexibility is called for," he said. "Under certain circumstances, working from home makes great sense - when you have health issues or are looking after family. In the past we would have said 'Too bad', but now we can manage for a few months."

Ultimately, Gorman said he expects that 80% of employee hours worked will be done in the bank's offices instead at home. Working from home will not be 100%, "but not zero," he concluded.

Goldman Sachs' CEO David Solomon is very keen on being back in the office too.

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AUTHORSarah Butcher

Global Editor

1 comments

Th
Thomas Crown
16 July 2021
JG is just another stone age neanderthal thinker who is trying to go along with and back up his other CEO buddies with their line about being back in the office to justify their lavish officers and many offices throughout the world. What if we had always worked from homes? and all these cities were green spaces. Would we be pushing to build expensive places in these green spaces, where everyone could come to do their work...F NO. If all the analysts and other trench workers form a union and tell these high paid ceo who all know each other and play golf together, have lavish parties that they invite each other to , meet at the cigar rooms, tell them to sick it and stay WFH.
Charles Bukowski, said it well
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? ”
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