Wall Street chief: Remote workers ‘don’t work as hard’ as hybrid tide turns
The boss of the investment firm, Blackstone Group, has accused remote workers of staying away from the office because it means they “don’t work as hard” and can save money.
Steve Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group, made the claims about hybrid staff while speaking on a panel at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
First reported by Bloomberg, Mr Schwarzman said employees continued to work from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you”.
When addressing office buildings in the US, he said some of those properties were “not survivable as economic entities” but that newer office buildings were proving resilient, while demand for real estate such as warehouses was on the increase.
The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, told the same panel that his company’s workers had returned to working from the office in recent months.
Solomon had previously described remote working as an “aberration” that needed to be corrected “as soon as possible”.
The comments come as some firms – even Zoom – increasingly tell staff to return to the office more often.
Despite the widespread adoption of hybrid working by most office-based employers since the pandemic, the KPMG CEO Outlook survey found that 64 per cent of leaders globally, and 63 per cent of those in the UK, predicted a full return to in-office working by 2026.
A survey earlier this week suggested we may already be seeing the trend.
More workers are returning to the office for the first time since the pandemic, the figures suggested.
A total of 43 per cent of workers have now returned to the office, while 39 per cent of workers are maintaining a hybrid schedule following the pandemic, according to the survey conducted by recruitment company Hays.
Although last year’s Hays survey indicated that 21 per cent of workers had been working fully remotely, that number has fallen to 18 per cent working from home.
Gaelle Blake, head of the permanent appointments team at Hays UK and Ireland, said there was still “no one-size-fits-all” answer when it comes to workplace preferences.
“Despite more workers saying they are now working full-time in an office — it’s evident that hybrid working can’t be erased overnight,” Blake added.
“What employers need to understand is that everyone is different — some workers may thrive in an office environment, and some won’t.”