JPMC RTO Petition

We, the workers of JPMorganChase (JPMC), are concerned about the future of our workplace - its integrity, employee satisfaction, and the increasing toxicity that has metastasized in our company culture in the last couple of months. As devoted employees, we must advocate for what is best- not merely for ourselves, but also for the customer, the shareholder, the firm, and the global community.

Six years ago, full-time in-office was the norm. Then COVID-19 lock-downs forced rapid change: It was uncomfortable, but we learned and adapted. So must leadership. Controlled A/B testing confirms that hybrid workers maintain the same high productivity levels as their full-time in-office counterparts, debunking the notion that remote work equates to lower performance. In addition to sustaining strong output, hybrid work reduces costs, enhances morale, and strengthens employee retention. JPMC itself has effectively onboarded and trained a full cohort of new employees under the hybrid model for the past five years without issue.

The recent mandate for 100% in-office work is a great leap backward: It hurts employees, customers, shareholders, and the firm’s reputation. From a corporate-citizenship perspective, it worsens traffic and pollution while disproportionately pushing out women, caregivers, senior employees, and individuals with disabilities. Many of these are top performers, and many of them only able to join the workforce under hybrid work rules. This directly contradicts JPMC’s commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Remote work may not suit in-person services, but it’s the way of the future for all knowledge work. Indeed, it’s often the only way to get anything done, even from the office!

The long-imagined workplace-of-tomorrow is upon us today. It’s been here for years, in fact. As teams globalized to meet business goals, e-mails and zoom-calls spanning the four corners of the Earth (and at all hours) inexorably replaced in-person collaboration.

Aside from the new headquarters to which most people will not be assigned, many corporate offices are crowded enough as things stand. They lack the space, the parking, and sometimes even the food-service capacity for the full complement of employees in the office all at once. Minimalist furniture, open architecture, and value-engineered input devices combine to make the office experience noisy, inefficient, and uncomfortable. To put the cherry on top, unassigned seating makes it impractical even to supply one’s own preferred keyboard or mouse.

Management in many locations said for years that the hybrid model was here to stay – often predicated on similar real-estate and global-efficiency arguments to those laid out above. People joined the company and built lives in reliance upon these representations.

Then, in early January, the press – not corporate leadership – broke the news. Someone leaked it, and we leave it to the reader to speculate as to why.

The sudden reversal sharply undermined trust between regular employees and upper management, while creating unnecessary friction and dissatisfaction among the workforce. Employees have voiced concerns internally, but those concerns have been repeatedly dismissed or silenced.

The whole ordeal has left us rank-and-file employees feeling betrayed and devalued. A further source of anxiety is that, although many locations are set to RTO in early March, many others are a big open question as to when they’ll be ready. All these employees may see a temporary reprieve, but they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time.

The CEO said in an interview on 60 Minutes recently that caring is critical for leadership. Now is the time to exercise some of that caring.