- JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon said during a Wednesday town hall he didn’t care how many employees signed a petition to bring back hybrid work. The company in mid-January announced a 100% return-to-office mandate, which angered many employees, who argue the move “disproportionately” pushed out women, caregivers, senior employees, and employees with disabilities.
The return-to-office battle between employees and executives has turned heated at times, and some companies have blundered in their push to get workers back in person.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, has made his stance on working five days in the office clear: Employees shouldn’t mess around with trying to get him to change his mind that working full-time in-person is best. But more than 1,200 JPMorgan employees have signed a petition against the company’s five-day-a-week, in-office mandate.
“Don’t waste time on it,” Dimon said during a company town hall on Wednesday, Reuters reported. “I don’t care how many people sign that f—ing petition.”
JPMorgan didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Dimon had announced the full-RTO mandate in mid-January, and the move immediately caught backlash from employees. Many argued the move “disproportionately” pushed out women, caregivers, senior employees, and employees with disabilities, according to the petition.
“I’m really against the full RTO out of empathy for a lot of colleagues whose personal lives will be upended,” a JPMorgan employee told Fortune’s Luisa Beltran on the condition of anonymity. “A lot of us have arranged our lives and [made] huge life decisions around being able to be remote a couple days a week or 40% of the time.”
But Dimon doesn’t have much sympathy for employees wanting to work from home.
“I’ve had it with this stuff,” Dimon said during the town hall, according to Barron’s. “I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since COVID, and I come in, and—where is everybody else?”
Barron’s also first reported the news JPMorgan has a series of layoffs planned for 2025, which began earlier this month. Yet, Dimon said, the company is investing in hiring new professionals, and JPMorgan has 14,000 open positions.
JPMorgan employees claim RTO policy will hurt the company
JPMorgan employees who signed the petition argue the company’s move to 100% in-office work is “a great leap backward,” arguing hybrid work “reduces costs, enhances morale, and strengthens employee retention.”
Both inside and outside of JPMorgan, employees also see RTO mandates as a way for leadership to have more oversight and control of the work they’re doing. Nearly 80% of workers said they think employers are pressuring their workforce to work in the office to see how they’re actually spending their time during the workday, according to a survey of 4,200 workers.
Experts have also expressed the pros of hybrid work, like higher efficiency and more collaboration.
In-person work “fosters a clear boundary between work and personal life, enhancing productivity and mental well-being,” Aytekin Tank, founder of Jotform, wrote in a July 2024 commentary article for Fortune. “It boosts learning and knowledge sharing, particularly benefiting new hires who thrive on direct interaction and mentorship.”
Still, workers want the flexibility they’d grown accustomed to during the past five years. At JPMorgan, there was some precedence in managers establishing hybrid work schedules with their direct reports, but Dimon also shut down that arrangement.
“There is no chance that I will leave it up to managers,” he said during the town hall. “Zero chance. The abuse that took place is extraordinary.”
Dimon also cited workers abusing remote work, particularly on Fridays, a popular work-from-home day.
“Don’t give me this s–t that work-from-home Friday works,” he said. “I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of.”
It appears unlikely JPMorgan will budge on its 100% RTO mandate, considering Dimon’s feelings on the matter. And at the end of the day, Dimon stressed, employees have a choice in whether to work for JPMorgan at all.
“It’s a free world,” Dimon said.
