Jamie Dimon's RTO Mandate Won't Solve Key Issues from Remote-Work Debate

Jamie Dimon fired a shot heard 'round the world in the escalating battle over work-from-home policies. In Ohio a few weeks ago to open a new branch, the JPMorgan Chase CEO delivered a blistering indictment of remote work while doubling down on his return-to-office policy.

"A lot of you were on the Zoom, and you were doing the following, okay?" he commented. "Looking through your email, texting each other about what an asshole the other person is. Not paying attention, not reading your materials. And if you don't think that reduces efficiency, creativity, and creates rudeness, it does, okay?"

The clincher: "And don't give me this shit that working from home on Friday works," he said. "I attempted to contact multiple people on Friday but was unable to reach anyone.That is not how you run a great company."

A recording of this surfaced online, as if he were sending a message to his 316,000 employees, who must return to work five days a week beginning next month. Dimon has since expressed regret for the tone of his rant, but he remains committed to his RTO mandate.

Other businesses are equally determined to force employees to return to the workplace. This will go into effect at Dell next month.In January, AT&T, like many others, ordered corporate employees to work on-site five days a week.

They hope to restore what existed prior to the pandemic: what I refer to as "serendipity bonding," or people meeting and collaborating more naturally.

However, there is a better way: reduce RTO and engage in a purposeful reengineering of old ways of work and collaboration that are unsuitable for today's world.

Dimon is completely justified in his outrage over some of the things he mentioned: backbiting and goldbricking are debilitating and ridiculous. However, this has little to do with "work from home" and everything to do with the broken cultures that exist in most companies.

The sin is not in the virtual, but in the design of the social contract that should govern a company and its employees. Most teams are mediocre.Their methods of collaboration are even worse, and their meetings are ineffective—the bane of their existence.

Only four people feel heard in a typical session with a dozen colleagues, according to research conducted by my firm. It takes three meetings to develop an implementable strategy. When asked to rate the level of courage and candor in meetings on a scale of 0 to 5, employees gave an average score of 2.4.

Conflict avoidance is one of the leading causes of shareholder value erosion. This is especially true in person, as 70% of team members avoid conflict at work. Frequently, they speak critically in private conversations only afterward, in a "meeting after meeting." This produces the candor and transparency that should occur during the meeting itself.