Goldman Sachs just upped the ante on the remote work reckoning.
The company is asking workers to come back to the office five days a week, according to a Bloomberg report. This is a much stricter policy than many other corporations, which have asked employees to return for at least two to three days a week.
And Goldman's move to raise the stakes on RTO could spur others to do the same.
"It's time to face reality. We're getting back to five days a week because that's the reality. That's what we saw before COVID and that's what we're currently seeing," said Jason Greer, the founder and president of Greer Consulting, on CNBC Wednesday.
"Companies are coming from the perspective of this… If I pay you every two weeks to come into the office, you come into the office and if you don't like it, take your ball and go somewhere else because there are thousands of employees looking to get your position," Greer said.
Greer said that companies are in a much different place than they were two years ago when they were offering employees more incentives, greater pay, and struggling to hire. There are more potential employees on the market, and quite simply, they have more leverage. So they are increasingly asking employees to come back to the office full time, even if it means they lose some workers.
"I hear this from executives all the time: 'We understand that we put these mandates in place, we're going to lose some people, but the good thing is there's so much available talent in the market, that if we lose those folks, we can replace them with people — and we can replace them with people who will actually command less than what those people were leaving out the door are commanding,'" Greer said.
Greer said that there were a lot of employers who paid workers $50,000 to $100,000 more than what they wanted during the pandemic labor shortage. But now, with layoffs across industries, especially in tech, employers have more power. Many companies have also realized they can maintain productivity with fewer people.
Amazon, Meta, and other major companies are also putting more pressure on employees to return to the office. Meta is asking most employees to return at least three days a week after September 5 or they could potentially lose their jobs.
Amazon is asking remote employees to return to the company's nearest "hub," which is a location assigned to them, or find work elsewhere. Even Zoom, the company that powered the remote work revolution during the COVID Era, is asking employees who work within 50 miles of its offices to return at least two days a week.
Greer said that employers are asking people back because there are connections you simply cannot make in a remote environment where people are operating virtually.
"In order to build a culture, you need to be face-to-face," he said. "Your manager needs to get to know you, you need to get to know your manager, you need to get to know your coworkers. And we can only do that to an extent virtually."
In short, the writing is on the wall.
"The days of COVID where we are able to work remotely, they're gone," Greer said.