What JPMorgan’s RTO Debate Misses About Performance

Performance is driven more by culture than proximity, the often oversimplified centerpiece of the return to office debate. While physical presence can support connection, it’s not the full story.

At a Glance: JPMorgan Chase has become the flag-bearer of the return-to-office debate, echoing moves by companies like Dell, Amazon, and AT&T. While the desired outcomes are well-intentioned, such as culture, collaboration and mentorship, the argument leans too heavily on physical proximity rather than genuine connection. This piece aims to rebalance the conversation using insights from behavioral economics and organizational science, offering a more precise way to evaluate the health of the underlying relationships between employee and employer regardless of location.

A Culture Clash in Plain Sight

In March 2025, JPMorgan Chase made headlines by mandating a five-day, in-office schedule for the majority of its workforce. CEO Jamie Dimon framed the decision around mentorship, collaboration, and innovation, hallmarks of in-person culture he believes can’t be replicated remotely. “It doesn’t work for our business,” he said bluntly. However, internal surveys revealed a different story inside the company: employee morale, work-life balance, and job satisfaction all declined. For some, the mandate felt less like a return to culture and more like a regression in trust.

The tension here isn’t about office furniture or commute times. It’s about what work means and whether being physically present is the same as being seen, heard, and valued. JPMorgan’s mandate is rooted in tradition and well-meaning leadership instincts. But it may also be overlooking a deeper truth: the conditions that drive performance aren’t entirely location dependent.

Proximity Isn’t the Precondition

JPMorgan’s leadership is trying to solve for something real: how to build a culture where people collaborate, learn, and thrive. But their solution of mandating physical presence conflates a method for an outcome. From a behavioral economics standpoint, people don’t engage more just because they’re near each other. They engage when they feel respected, trusted, and empowered to contribute.

Proximity can help. It creates opportunities for chance encounters and serendipity that can lead to new relationships or novel information exchanges. But those aren’t guaranteed just by being in the same room. What matters is whether the environment fosters the core psychological conditions that shape human motivation: respect, contribution, and support. Those are designable. And they aren’t locked to any one location.

Even well-intentioned mandates – if perceived as controlling or mistrustful – can backfire. That perception threatens not just morale but long-term retention. Flexibility has moved from a perk to a principle. Employees now weigh it alongside pay and benefits when deciding where to work (or not work). In this environment, leaders should shift their focus from where people sit to how people feel.

What Employees Need to Thrive

If the aim is to strengthen culture and performance, we should start with what employees need. Not in abstract terms but in ways that shape how they show up. The research can be nuanced (see the sources if you want to dig deeper), but for the messiness of reality, leaders should focus on three stand-out elements:

1. Respect. At its core, respect is about feeling like your perspective matters, even when it’s not the final decision. It’s the quiet but powerful recognition that your voice carries weight and that your opinion is heard (even if it’s not always agreed with). Respect shows up in how leaders listen, how decisions are explained, and how ideas are debated. When employees feel respected, they’re more open to learning, feedback, and growth simply because they trust the intent.

2. Contribution. People want to feel useful. They want to do work that matters to their team, organization, and society. Contribution is as much about ownership as it is about output. Employees thrive when given room to lead, solve real problems, and learn by doing. That’s not the same as sitting near someone more experienced. Apprenticeship cultures work better when they pair learning with doing, rather than just observation alone. Real contribution requires real opportunities, not just proximity.

3. Support. Support is the scaffolding that makes growth possible. It’s about creating an environment where people can ask questions, offer ideas, and stretch into new challenges without fear of being punished for trying. It includes timely feedback, guidance from leaders, and access to the right experiences. When people feel backed rather than just evaluated, they take greater initiative. And they help others rise, too.

Each element – respect, contribution, and support – is a building block of performance. They are also foundational to retention. When these are missing, people leave. And in today’s labor market, the ones who leave first are often the most talented and mobile.

Here’s the critical point: none of these elements are inherently tied to a location. Proximity can aid them, but it doesn’t create them. And in a post-COVID world, where flexibility has become a cultural expectation, forcing a return may signal to employees that what they need to thrive isn’t being heard.

A Leader’s Role, Regardless of Location

Let’s assume you’re not Jamie Dimon (though, if you are, hit me up – I think I can help!). Most readers won’t set their employer’s RTO policy. But you do shape culture.

The most important work happens not through corporate mandates but day-to-day leadership decisions. Managers and team leaders are the ones who can make employees feel respected. Who can open space for contribution. Who can stretch and support people in their growth.

This is where organizational network analysis (ONA) can help. ONA is a method that uses data – surveys, communication patterns, and collaboration tools – to map how information, trust, and influence move through an organization. In other words, it helps leaders see the real, often invisible social and political relationships that shape culture.

For example, if proximity is meant to foster mentorship, ONA can help identify isolated or disconnected employees better (even in a physical office). Leaders can use those insights to pair high-potential employees with mentors who are not only experienced but well-connected. These pairings can even support equity goals, such as ensuring that underrepresented talent is integrated into influential parts of the network and given the proper chance to prove themselves.

The idea isn’t to replace human judgment with algorithms, but to enhance it. ONA gives leaders a way to see where trust is thin, where contribution is stalled, or where support systems need reinforcement.

Even in rigid RTO environments like JPMorgan’s, leaders can still shape how those policies are experienced. And whether people feel like they’re being monitored or mentored. And whether they are brought into decisions or handed mandates. These determine whether people stay, stretch, or quietly opt-out.

Said differently: if proximity is the strategy, relationships are the execution. And every manager has influence over that.

A Better Path to High Performance

Trust is the throughline. It’s what JPMorgan’s leadership wants to build and what employees want to feel. But trust isn’t created by presence alone. It’s built through consistent, respectful, and meaningful interactions, regardless of location.

Research has also identified that job security is another key piece of a healthy culture. When mandates feel top-down or overly rigid, they can signal fragility in that relationship. They imply that the company doesn’t trust its people and that dissent may be punished. That fear undermines the very engagement companies are trying to reclaim.

If employees sense that their autonomy is being ignored or that questioning the policy might cost them their jobs, they will leave. And they won’t be the disengaged middle. They’ll be your highest performers who can choose where they go next.

So the next time we debate remote work, let’s not ask just where people are. Let’s also ask whether they feel seen, trusted, and valued. Because that’s the culture that keeps people engaged and fuels their performance.

References:

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This isn’t where the story ends. There’s so much more to culture, performance, and the social and political relationships that define how work gets accomplished. I might suggest reading another article that shows how influence, sentiment, and even trust ripple from person to person in an organization. And that isn’t location dependent either.