Around the world, workers are back in the -2-

Luciano Pollastri, global talent director at Amadeus, told MarketWatch that he thinks the U.S. has blazed a trail for working-from-home trends. "At the moment of the lockdown during the pandemic, I was calling the guys in the U.S. to understand how they were organized, because they were looking in the rearview mirror already for some things," he said.

In London, a 45-year-old administrator at JPMorgan Chase's investment banking unit, who preferred to remain anonymous, said there are still pockets of "resistance" inside the bank's headquarters in the Canary Wharf area, with a "split" emerging between older workers who go into the office more and younger staffers who prefer to work from home. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) declined to comment.

The administrator told MarketWatch the investment bank currently monitors workers' pass data and that people get "called out" in meetings if they fail to spend at least 60% of their time in the office, as the investment banking arm requires its rank-and-file staff to do. The administrator, who lives an hour away from the bank's offices, said he comes in three times a week. "I'm not bothered," he said.

In London, JPMorgan Chase requires rank-and-file staff come into the office three days a week and managing directors to come in five days a week, sources familiar with the situation told MarketWatch.

Ross Millar, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase, told MarketWatch he was firmly in favor of in-person working, stating that he believes "there's a need" to work from the office and that work "flows a lot more organically" if people come in.

Millar said he now works from the office five days a week, as is required for all managing directors. He lives a 10-minute walk from the Canary Wharf office and enjoys spending his weekends in the docklands financial hub. He dismissed the notion of widespread resistance as the "odd grumbling here and there."

The banking sector generally has emerged as a battleground for work-from-home perks. Deutsche Bank made headlines earlier this year that highlighted a tug-of-war between some workers and management.

In late February, in emailed comments to Fortune, Stephan Szukalski, federal chair of the German Association of Bank Employees, spoke about "enormous resistance" to plans by Deutsche Bank to push workers back into the office more often at a time when many were working at home three days per week. The union did not respond to a request for comment.

A Deutsche Bank (DB) spokesperson told MarketWatch in March that there was "no global hybrid-working model" for employees before the pandemic, but current guidelines now allow for remote work 40% to 60% of the time. Beginning in June, all employees can work remotely up to 40% of the week, but they can no longer take both Mondays and Fridays. Managing directors are required to be in the office four days a week.

Some expect office needs for Europe's biggest economy to shift further in the future. A study published in March by the Ifo Institute, a German think tank, predicted the country will face a 12% reduction in office-space needs by 2030 as remote-working policies evolve.

"Regular working from home has become the new normal for around 25% of employees and 69% of companies" in Germany, chipping away at demand for office space, Ifo economist Simon Krause, who co-authored the study, told MarketWatch in an interview.

By 2030, Krause said he expects the need for office space will have fallen by 11.5 million square meters in seven major German cities, including Berlin and Munich.

Still, that seems a ways off. Krause pointed out that Germany is an industrial heavyweight in cars and chemicals, industries that aren't conducive to remote working.

In his view, Germany has come a long way and won't go back to its old ways. "I would like to emphasize that working from home has taken a huge and permanent leap since the pandemic by rising from only about 5% before the pandemic to 25% today in Germany," he said.

With reporting by Francis Yue.

-Louis Goss -Barbara Kollmeyer

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-01-24 0932ET

Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.