BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, is reportedly preparing to order its senior managers to work from the office five days a week.
The New-York based company is expected to tell its staff as early as Thursday that about 1,000 managing directors around the world should work in the office full-time, the Financial Times has reported.
BlackRock last told staff in 2023 they had to go into the office at least four days a week. More junior staff will still be allowed to work from home one day a week under the new guidance, according to the report.
BlackRock, which has more than 21,000 staff around the world, is one of many big American corporations calling time on an era of remote and hybrid working triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase summoned all its workers back into the office. Jamie Dimon, the head of the bank, has long been a proponent of restoring pre-pandemic working patterns.
In an internal memo to staff, Dimon and other executives acknowledged that some workers preferred a hybrid schedule and that they “respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision”. However they insisted that it was “the best way to run the company”.
Barclays also hardened its stance on remote working earlier this year, ordering that all staff should work from the office at least three days a week, up from a previous requirement of two days.
While technology companies led the shift in working patterns during the pandemic, businesses in the sector are also beginning to mandate a return to the office. This year Amazon increased its requirement from three days to five days a week in the office for its staff.
On Thursday, a House of Lords committee set up to investigate how the rise of remote and hybrid working has affected employers, employees and the wider British economy, was told that the traditional Friday post-work drink had all but disappeared from UK city centres as a result of changes in working patterns.
“In London’s instance, the Friday night drink hasn’t gone away; it has just shifted to a Thursday,” Paul Swinney, the director of policy and research at the thinktank Centre for Cities, told the committee.
“When we looked at other large cities … it appeared from the data that we have, that the post-work drink has reduced.”
The committee was told that recent Centre for Cities research had found increased home-working had changed the spending habits of commuters and this could pose a challenge for service businesses that depended on footfall from office workers, such as hospitality venues, sandwich bars and coffee shops.
Swinney said: “In London it seems like it’s potentially a reallocation during the working week, whereas in other large cities, hybrid working seems to have led to a reduction of weekday spending by workers in the city centre.”
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Despite an initial push after the pandemic to get workers back into the office, 28% of working adults in the UK still had hybrid working arrangements in autumn of 2024, according to official data.
These workers on average saved 56 minutes from commuting, spent 24 minutes more on sleep, and 15 minutes more on exercise, sports and wellbeing, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics.
A recent poll also found nearly half of professionals would consider quitting if their employer forced them back to the office on a full-time basis, according to a poll by the recruitment company Hays.
However, return to office mandates, combined with a slowdown in development over the past few years, has meant that rent prices have gone up. Rent for prime City office space rose 7.5% over the course of last year, according to research by the estate agent Savills.
BlackRock has been approached for comment.
