Most JPMorgan, Stifel Employees to Return to Offices

For JPMorgan, he said: "Generally speaking, we envision a model that will find many employees working in a location full time. That would include nearly all of the employees in our retail bank branches, as well as jobs in check processing, vaults, lockbox, sales and trading, critical operations functions and facilities, amenities, security, medical staff and many others."

Meanwhile, "some employees will be working under a hybrid model (e.g., some days per week in a location and the other days at home)" and "a small percentage of employees, maybe 10%, will possibly be working full time from home for very specific roles," he said.

Those decisions will always "depend upon what is optimal for our company and our clients, and we will extensively monitor and analyze outcomes to ensure this is the case," he explained. "Of course, we will also continue to reopen following health authority and government guidelines and our own established processes."

Remote work will change how the firm manages its real estate, he went on to point out. "We will quickly move to a more 'open seating' arrangement, in which digital tools will help manage seating arrangements, as well as needed amenities, such as conference room space. As a result, for every 100 employees, we may need seats for only 60 on average. This will significantly reduce our need for real estate."

However, JPMorgan still plans to build its new headquarters in New York City, he said. "We will, of course, consolidate even more employees into this building, which will house between 12,000 to 14,000 employees. We are extremely excited about the building's public spaces, state-of-the-art technology, and health and wellness amenities, among many other features."

Despite the importance of technology, the "virtual world also presented some serious weaknesses," he noted. For example, "performing jobs remotely is more successful when people know one another and already have a large body of existing work to do [and] does not work as well when people don't know one another."

Also, "most professionals learn their job through an apprenticeship model, which is almost impossible to replicate in the Zoom world," he said. "Over time, this drawback could dramatically undermine the character and culture you want to promote in your company."

Additionally, he said: "A heavy reliance on Zoom meetings actually slows down decision making because there is little immediate follow-up. And remote work virtually eliminates spontaneous learning and creativity because you don't run into people at the coffee machine, talk with clients in unplanned scenarios, or travel to meet with customers and employees for feedback on your products and services."

Pictured: Stifel CEO Ronald Kruszewski (Photo: Bloomberg)