Vdid they come back? Like the marmots at the end of spring, the workers are struggling to get out of their dens and their bosses are worried. “If you are able to go to a restaurant again, you can go to work”, on Monday, June 14, James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, to his employees. He awaits them firmly in September.
More expeditious, the bosses of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase summoned their employees by July. “We know from experience that our culture of collaboration, innovation and learning thrives when our employees are together, and we would like our colleagues to return to the office to realize it again”, indicates the internal memo sent by the management of Goldman Sachs.
It seems to float like a wind of panic in the American bank. A study by the company Accenture, published in May, indicated that 78% of bosses in the industry wanted their flocks to come back at least four days a week. It will not be cheerful, judging by the very interesting study conducted by three economists from the universities of Chicago, Stanford and Mexico (National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2021).
Political divide
They interviewed a sample of nearly 30,000 American workers, aged 20 to 64 and earning more than $ 20,000 per year, on their one-year telecommuting experience. And the answer is clear: less than 30% want to return to the office full time. And nearly 20% now want to work completely from home. They were only 5% before the Covid-19 pandemic. The researchers estimate the overall productivity gain at + 4.6%, mainly by reducing transport times.
The shock is therefore massive and companies are struggling to find the right martingale – generally two days of teleworking per week – between the need to preserve the cohesion of the group and the concern to keep the motivation of troops conquered in this new life, in particular the couples with young children.
A cleavage that does not avoid the political box, since the most determined applicants are recruited from the section of graduate employees, working in services … and living in states favorable to the Democratic Party. For them, “The post-pandemic economy will include more teleworking, but much less than they would like”, concluded the study. Social experimentation through the health crisis.
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