JPMorgan staff are using a private chat to vent about the incoming RTO mandate — and share intel

 

In a private group chat formed after JPMorgan's January announcement that all employees would be called back to the office full-time, a few hundred people have turned to the forum to air their concerns, vent about the changes, and share tidbits of intel from their respective corners of the bank in a bid to understand the bank's plans.

The "extremely active" chat gets upward of 100 messages a day, according to one member, a JPMorgan employee of 8 years, who talked to Business Insider. It is one of many Signal chats and Reddit threads that JPMorgan employees are turning to as unofficial "support groups" for employees.

"There's a depressingly small amount of official information within JPMC," they said, expressing their concern about the lack of emails about what's happening. "We have to go find the information, it is not being broadcast."

Last week, a document with JPMorgan branding was shared with the group and caused an instant hubbub, a different member of the chat told BI, which viewed the contents. It appeared to be an outline of steps of escalation for employees who don't meet RTO mandates, including a lower number of non-attendance warnings before possible termination for some.

BI was unable to verify the authenticity of the document or determine who dropped it in the encrypted chat. It is also unclear if it represents current or future bank policy. What is clear based on chat members' reactions to the 6-page outline is that JPMorgan Chase employees are hungry for any clues to how the bank will enforce its 5-days-in-office policy, which began rolling out March 3.

A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the document but said, "If employees are not meeting the expectations, there will be ramifications — just like any other performance issue."

Employees are also eager to understand how their attendance is monitored. Some worry that company tracking methods might not correctly record their hours or productivity — putting them at risk of potential enforcement. Others feel the RTO mandates and attendance recording measures are overkill. The employees were granted anonymity by BI to discuss internal company information without professional repercussions.

One JPMorgan tech VP told BI, sarcastically, that they thought the "babysitting was ending."

People in the aforementioned group chat have been sharing intel about tools for surveilling employee location and productivity. An employee who BI did not speak with shared that their manager had shown them a new tool with a heat map that shows how productive employees are based on the items worked on per hour. A technologist who has direct knowledge confirmed to BI the existence of a tool that tracked productivity per hour. It is unclear how widely it had been rolled out.