JPMorgan Chase Tells US Staff to Return to the Office in July
By Celia Young April 27, 2021 12:32 pm
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JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is calling its U.S. employees back to the office, opening its locations to all employees nationwide on May 17 and mandating that all workers return on a rotational schedule as soon as July, according to an internal memo sent Tuesday morning and obtained by Commercial Observer.
The bank’s offices will be limited to 50 percent occupancy until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changes its social distancing guidelines, Bloomberg first reported. JPMorgan Chase is the largest private occupier of office space in Manhattan and has about 5 million square feet of space in the borough.
The memo cited the rising number of vaccinations administered in the U.S. as the reason for the May reopening, and encouraged employees to stay safe and get vaccinated. Increasing vaccination numbers is one of the reasons that a growing list of companies — including Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Morgan Stanley — have been inviting workers back to the office.
JPMorgan’s memo noted, however, that a vaccination was not required in order to come back to the office. The return to offices nationwide and the rotating schedules will be parsed out with managers and location leaders in different branches of the business, the bank said.
“We know that many of you are excited to come back, but we also know that for some, the idea of coming in on a regular basis is a change through which you’ll need to manage,” the memo read. “Please start to discuss your return with your manager and make necessary arrangements.”
JPMorgan’s return to the office comes a month after CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual message to shareholders that it expects remote work to “significantly reduce our need for real estate.” The bank is already dumping about 800,000 square feet of office space on Manhattan’s already crowded sublease market.
However, JPMorgan is still committed to occupying its new 2.5 million square-foot headquarters at 270 Park Avenue.
