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David Solomon, Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, speaks at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, April 29, 2019.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said working from home was “not a new standard” for the investment banking giant, calling it an “aberration.”
Speaking at Credit Suisse’s annual virtual financial services forum on Wednesday, Solomon said the coronavirus pandemic has seen a “significant portion” of Goldman Sachs employees switch to remote work.
However, he said the company has still managed to have less than 10% of its staff on average working in its offices around the world.
In New York City, Solomon said Goldman had up to a quarter of its employees working on site and had managed to bring the same number back to its London offices last summer and fall, when public health restrictions in the UK had eased briefly.
Goldman had returned more than half of its staff to its offices in Asia, Solomon said, but added that this had fallen again in the fall and winter with a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
“I think for a company like ours, which is an innovative and collaborative learning culture, it’s not ideal for us and it’s not a new standard,” Solomon said.
“This is an aberration that we will correct as quickly as possible,” he added.
Solomon said he is making special efforts to ensure that the next cohort of young workers to join Goldman Sachs next summer do not start working remotely at the company, as he believed they might miss the ” direct contact ”and“ direct mentoring ”.
He said he was “a big believer in personal connectivity” and therefore didn’t think for a company like Goldman that his style of operation would be very different after the pandemic.
Solomon’s comments stand in stark contrast to those of many big names in the tech space who have made the shift to remote working a more permanent part of their operations. The latest example is the music streaming service Spotify, which announced earlier this month that it would let employees work from anywhere after the pandemic.
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