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It wasn\u2019t thousands of staff petitioning their boss to let them work from home that convinced CEOs to loosen their in-office mandates\u2014or even war in Iran threatening global oil supplies. It was the World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In fact, two of the loudest champions of the return-to-office movement, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, are temporarily allowing employees to request remote work on match days during the 2026 tournament, according to internal memos seen by the Financial Times.<\/em><\/p>\n Hundreds of thousands of football fans are expected to swarm New York and New Jersey in the coming weeks to watch the soccer. But the likes of JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon aren\u2019t giving their workers flexibility to clock off early and join the fans to watch the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reason for the temporarily softened stance is that there will be significant changes to transit services and severe street closures to accommodate the massive crowds. During peak travel windows, World Cup ticket holders will be prioritized\u2014so workers who commute on impacted routes that do not have a ticket to the match won\u2019t be able to catch their train into the office, or home.\u00a0<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just Wall Street bankers getting a taste of unexpected flexibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Federal agencies, publicists, government workers, and school teachers are among those logging in from home while America hosts the World Cup, according to Bloomberg<\/em>.<\/p>\n The backtrack, albeit temporary, is a sharp reversal for two of corporate America\u2019s most uncompromising voices on office attendance.<\/p>\n When JPMorgan launched its five-day mandate in March 2025, its employees swiftly petitioned their CEO to reverse it, arguing the policy \u201cdisproportionately\u201d pushed out women, caregivers, senior employees, and employees with disabilities.<\/p>\n But Dimon, who has shared frustration with not being able to contact people as easily because of remote work, bluntly responded that he didn\u2019t \u201ccare how many people sign that f\u2014ing petition\u201d before telling workers not to \u201cwaste time\u201d on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Goldman\u2019s CEO David Solomon, meanwhile, famously called remote work \u201can aberration that we\u2019re going to correct as quickly as possible.\u201d Soccer, apparently, is a different matter.<\/p>\n But Amazon, which had a tough time getting workers back to their office desks\u2014including thousands of employees pledging to walk out from their jobs to take a stand\u2014isn\u2019t budging.<\/p>\n Instead of granting workers a brief relief from commuting chaos during the major sporting event, it is telling workers to go into the office earlier than usual to mitigate any commuting issues, as well as highlighting transit options to avoid traffic congestion, per Bloomberg<\/em>.<\/p>\n And they\u2019re perhaps right to be worried about loosening their grip. Research shows that despite bosses\u2019 best wishes, remote work just won\u2019t die.\u00a0<\/p>\n Around half of U.S. firms asked workers to return to the office in 2023\u2014but by the following year, only a third kept their 5-day in-office mandates in place. Today, U.S. workers still spend more than a quarter of their workdays at home, according to a monthly survey by economists at ITAM Business School and Stanford University.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s not changing anytime soon. Last year, 40% of roles advertised across the world on LinkedIn were hybrid, according to data exclusively shared with Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n The reality is, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and it\u2019s not going back: On average, workers globally are just spending three days of the week in the office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Goldman #Sachs #JPMorgan #Chase #letting #staff #work #remotelybut #World #Cup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It wasn\u2019t thousands of staff petitioning their boss to let them work from home that convinced CEOs to loosen their in-office mandates\u2014or even war in Iran threatening global oil supplies.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[714,3826,4977,1360,2733,3015,1287,1194,1102,10832,2401,1521,3040,3016,10833,3041,1361,4769,2100,1622,1105,3042,51,1965],"class_list":["post-8752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-chase","tag-cup","tag-david-solomon","tag-goldman","tag-goldman-sachs-group","tag-hybrid-work","tag-jamie-dimon","tag-jpmorgan","tag-jpmorgan-chase","tag-letting","tag-lifestyle","tag-office","tag-office-culture","tag-remote-work","tag-remotelybut","tag-return-to-office","tag-sachs","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-staff","tag-work","tag-work-life-balance","tag-world","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A break from strict mandates, thanks to soccer\u2014but Amazon isn\u2019t taking any chances<\/h2>\n