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The pandemic has radically altered people’s working lives. Employees in different industries got attached to remote work, and they want to hold onto it, as companies try to bring them back into the office, and experts are warning that if companies don’t embrace remote work, they might lose talent.

Some companies have fully embraced remote work. However, others, including Disney, NewsCorp, and Starbucks have recently started asking workers to come back into the office. Now, the CEO of Morgan Stanley is sharing his own thoughts as well, making clear that working remotely is “not an employee choice.” 

“They don’t get to choose their compensation, they don’t get to choose their promotion, they don’t get to choose to stay home five days a week,” said James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday in Davos. “I want them with other employees at least three or four days.”

Despite promoting the return to office, Gorman acknowledged that the decision has a lot to do with the specific role of the employee. 

“There are different kinds of jobs,” he said. “Five days in the office for everybody is not going to happen again.”

 He also said he would be “very disappointed” if employees didn’t return in person by September of that year. 

Banks have been among the most aggressive in pushing for in-person work. Last January, Goldman Sachs asked employees to return to offices, but one year on, the progress hasn’t been as expected. The investment bank’s U.S. office attendance was between 75% and 80% before the pandemic, and was hovering at about 65% in October 2022.