Even so, banks are wary of keeping too many employees at home. “What we’re seeing is that emotional disconnection by not seeing your colleagues in person—and some people haven’t seen their colleagues in person for 18 months—could also drive up attrition,” Sethi said. “You feel it’s much harder to resign from a job that you’re actually building those relationships with colleagues in person.”
Wall Street’s five largest banks may be sticking by their plans to open buildings to more staffers, but several of their smaller rivals have decided to balk.
Like Jefferies, Perella Weinberg Partners and Credit Suisse Group AG have pushed back their U.S. return-to-office dates. Wells Fargo & Co. did so not once but twice in recent weeks.
“We are postponing the start of our return to office until Oct. 18,” Wells Fargo Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell said in a memo to staff Sept. 1. “We continue to monitor and respond to the dynamic external environment.”
Enthusiasm about coming to the office tends to differ by age group, according to Becky Frankiewicz, president of North America for the staffing firm Manpowergroup Inc.
Many millennials are raising children and are worried about their kids contracting Covid-19, Frankiewicz said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. Generation Z, on the other hand, is probably most excited to come back into the office, because “they’re fresh out of college, they’re looking to make their friends, it’s where they find their dating pool.”
Also enthusiastic about returning are baby boomers and members of Generation X, she said. “And think about who’s running the world’s companies right now. It is the Gen X and Boomers. So we see really varied interest about coming back into the workplace.”
—With assistance from Hannah Levitt and Katherine Doherty.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.